1873 
Copy 


1 

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'.A-IDIDI^EISSES 




ON THE OCCASION OF THE 




IN AUGU RATION 




Mm. Charles Henry Fowler^. 3.^ 




AS 

President of the Northwestern University, 




CTTJIsr-Fl 26, 1873. 




CHICAGO: 
H. R. McCabb & Co.. Peinters, .57 Washinrton St. 

1874. 



.A. ID ID :R.E S S E S 



ON THE OCCASION OF THE 



INAUGURATION 



]R:>e¥, Chmies Heerj Fowler, 33, 



AS 



Preside/]/! of the I\Ioi^thwester/\i U/\i/vers/ty, 



CrXJnSTE 26, 1873. 



■a Hi 
A 



CHICAGO: 
R. R. McCabis &, Co., Printers, 37 Wasuin&ton iSx. 

1874. 



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6 



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1 




lOBTfflWESTEKS IJlIVBBSIfT, 



CHARTERED JAN. 38, 1851. 



PRESIDENTS 



Kev. C. T. HINMAN, D.D., 

Rev. R. S. FOSTER, D.D., LL.D., . 

Rev. E. O. HAVEN, D.D., LL.D., 

Rev. C. H. FOWLER, D.D., . . . , 

iW BXCHANrfr 
K. Hostel 1 by 



Elected June 33, 1853. 

" 25, 1856. 

'• 23, 1869. 

Oct. 33, 1873. 



* CONTENTS 



I. Tkustees, 4 

II. Statement, 5 

III. Presentation Address, on Behat^f op the Board of 

Trustees, by Robert F. Queal, Esq., (5 

IV. Charoe, on Behalf of the Church, by Rev. Edmund G. 

Andrews', one op the Bishops op the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church, ^> 

V. Inaugural Address, by Rev. C. H. Fowler, D. D., President 

op the Northwestern University, 15 



TRUSTEES 



FIRST BOARD. 



RICHARD HANEY, 
PHILO JUDiSON, 
S. P. KBYBS, 
A. E. PHELPS. 
HENRY SUMMERS, 
ELIHU SPRINGER. 
DAVID BROOKS, 
ELMORE YOCITM. 
H. W. REED, 
I. I. STEWART, 
D. N. SMITH, 
GEORGE M. TEAS. 



Rock River. 



Wisconsin. 



Iowa. 



A. G. SHERMAN, 
GRANT GOODRICH, 
ANDREW J. BROWN. 
JOHN EVANS, 
ORRINGTON LUNT, 
J. K. BOTSPORD, 
JOSEPH KETTLE STRINGS. 
GEORGE F. F08»ER, 
ERI REYNOLDS, 
JOHN M. ARNOLD, 
ABSOLOM FUNK, 
E. B. KINGSLEY. 



('hieago. 



PRESENT 

W. H. BYFORD, M.D., Chicago. 

WIRT DEXTER, 

Hon. GEORGE F. FOSTER, " 

Hon. HARVEY B. HURD, Evanston. 

WILLIAM H. LUNT, 

SAMUEL Mccarty. Aurora. 

Rev. PHILO JUDSON, Evanston. 

Hon. JOHN W. SPENCER, Rock Island. 

ALBRO E. BISHOP, Cliicago. 

JAMES G. HAMILTON, 
ORRINGTON LUNT, 
ROBERT F. QUEAL, 
ABNER R. SCRANTON, 
WILLIAM WHEELER, 

KLEGTED BY 

Rev. N. H. AXTBLL, A.M., Rock River. 

Rev. H. L. martin. Rock River. 

Rbv. ZADOK hall. Central 111. 

Rev. WM. M. hunter, Central 111. 

Rev R. SAPP, Michigan. 



BOARD. 

JABEZ K. BOTSPORD, Chicago. 
Hon. JOHN EVANS, M.D., Denver, Col. 
LUTHER L.GRBENLEAF, Evanston. 
Rev. RICHARD HANEY, Monmouth. 
T. W. HARVEY, Chicago. 

THOS. C. HOAG, Evanston. 

D. D. L. McCULLOCH, Kankakee. 
Rev. WM. P. STEWART, ; Chicago. 

Hon. JAS. B. BRAD WELL. Chicago. 

CHARLES BUSBY, 

GEORGE C. COOK, 

Hon. JOHN V. FARWELL, 

Hon. grant GOODRICH, 

E. O. HAVEN, D.d'., LL.D., New York. 
J. R. LEMON, Freeport. 



Rev. ANDREW J. ELDRED, Michigan. 



CONFERENCES. 

Rev. a. EDWARDS, D.D., 

Rev. W. W. WASHBURN, 

Rev. S. T. COOPER, 

Rev. AARON WOOD, DD., 

Bishop E. R. AMES, D.D., 

Rev. R. D. ROBINSON, 



OFFICERS OF THE BOARD. 



JOHN EVANS, President. 

JAMES 6. HAMILTON, Vice-President. 



THOMAS C. HOAG, 
WILLIAM H. LUNT, 



Detroit. 
Detroit. • 
N. W. Ind. 
N. W. Ind. 
North Ind. 
North Ind. 



Treasurer. 
Secretary. 



JOHN EVANS, 
JAMBS G. HAMILTON, 
J4.BEZ K. BOTSFORD, 



EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. 

ORRINGTON LUNT. 
ROBERT F. QUEAL, 
GEORGE C. COOK, 



THOMAS C. HOAG, 
ERASTUS O. HAVEN. 
WILLIAM H. LUNT. 



STATEMENT. 



At a meeting of the Board ofTrustees of the Northwestern University, 
held Oct. 23, 1873, pursuant to a special call, President E. O. Haven, 
having been elected Secretary of the Educational Society of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, tendered his resignation as President of the North- 
western University, and it was accepted. Rev. Charles H. Fowler, D. D., 
was unanimously elected President of the University. The Executive 
Committee was instructed to arrange for the inauguration, in case of Dr. 
Fowler's acceptance. In consultation with the President and Faculty, 
the inauguration services were ordained to transpire on the 26th day of 
June, 1873, at 10 o'clock a. m., in the University grove, between University 
Hall and the lake. In the absence of the President of the Board, Hon. 
Gov. John Evans, the Board, in session June 24, 1873, appointed Robert 
F. Queal, Esq., to preside on the occasion and make the presentation 
address. At the time and place appointed, in the presence of the Governor 
of the State of Illinois, Hon. John L. Beveridge, and of the Board of 
Trustees, and of the Faculties of the University, and of visiting clergymen. 
Dr. Fowler was formally inducted into the office of President of the 
Northwestern University, in the service as follows : 

Music by the Band. 

Prayer, By Eev. L. Hitchcock, D. D. 

Music. Singing-. 

Presentation Address and Transfer of the Keys of the Uni- 
versity, By Robert F. Queal. 

Music by the Band. 

Address-Charge, . . | %^^^- ^^~^^- Andrews one of the 
' l Bishops of the M. E. Church. 

Music. Singing, 

Inaugural Address, - By President Fowler. 

Benediction, By Rev. H. Bannister, D. D. 



Presentation ^^ddress 

On Behalf of the Board of Trustees 
BIT I^^OBEI^T IP. Q^TJEJ^Xj, ESQ;. 



Tlie Board of Trustees of the Northwestern University, in the 
presence of its faculties, students and friends, have met to inau- 
gurate and formally invest with the dignity and responsibilities 
of the place, their unanimous choice for President of this 
Institution. 

The day is one of marked interest to us, and, doubtless, will 
be memorable in the history of the institution. Twenty years 
ago' the foundations of the institution were laid by a band of 
noble, self-forgetting, far-seeing men, to whom, in connection 
with education here, all after time will be a debtor. 

From small beginnings, by sagacity in accumulating, by 
frugality and patient husbandry of resources, by a wise blending 
of progress and caution, aided from time to time by generous 
o-ifts, there has been ^gathered here, under control of and belong- 
ing to the University, for educational uses, in buildings, grounds, 
miiseums, libraries, apparatus, endowed professorships, pro- 
ductive and unproductive property, an aggregate value of one 
and one-half million of dollars. Including the appliances and 
property of the Garrett Biblical Institute — a separate institu- 
tion for theological training, but closely allied in some depart- 
ments of its educational work with the University, — an estate in 
value of tw^o million • dollars is held here in trust for higher 
educational uses. 

No day of its past has seemed so auspicious for this institution 
as this. 

It has an efficient and largely attended Preparatory or Academ- 



ical department ; a College of Literature and Science, thoroughly 
organized and ably manned ; a Medical department in the Chi- 
cago Medical College, with an able faculty and many years of 
honorable history. Through the influence and efforts prominently 
of its recently elected President, a College of Technology for the 
teaching of the applied sciences, has just been ordained by the 
trustees, and arrangements have been substantially completed 
for a Law department conjointly with the Chicago University, the 
school to be located in Chicago. And responding to its own 
broad and generous impulses, and to the growing sentiment of 
the age, several years since it opened its college classes to women 
on the same terms as to men, and it has now attached to itself 
the Evanston College for Ladies, which is henceforth to be " The 
Woman's College of the Northwestern UniA^ersity," and it has 
placed in its own governing board and in its faculty of instruc- 
tion women with the same prerogatives as men. 

Thus established, endowed and organized, bold in its provisions 
for the broadest culture, inflexible in its adherence to Christian 
learning, its pl-omise of usefulness seemed never so great, an 
assured and beneficent future never so certain. May we not 
restrain our impatience "and pause for a moment before we 
advance to the pleasant duty and entertainment of the hour, to 
refer to those who have in this high office preceded him who 
honors us and whom we honor this day with a formal investiture 
of the dignity of the Presidency of this Institution. 

In the flush and beauty of a generous, richly endowed man- 
hood, by overwork before his prime, the University's first Presi- 
dent — the sanguine, silver-tongued, saintly Clark T. Hinman — 
fell in the work to which he had dedicated his life. His suc- 
cessor, Randolph S. Foster, blending all sweetness and gentleness 
of spirit with a mind of keen, incisive, controversial, crushing 
power — with winning, wonderful pulpit gifts, now serves the 
church through her wide fields in episcopal supervision. 

His successor, Henry S. Noyes, though never elected to the 
Presidency, was for many years the executive officer of the 
faculty, as well as industriously devoted to the material interests 
of the University. With a noble presence, with rich intellectual 
and manly endowments, with a love for the University that knew 
no abatement, living or dying, he has passed from his labors to 
the rewards of the faithful beyond our sight. 



8 

Other members of the Board of Instruction still holding 
honored and useful relations thereto, have, at different times, 
acted with efficiency as executive officers of the faculty. 

The recently retiring President, Erastus O. Haven, with well 
rounded, fine equipoise of character, came to us crowned with 
success as preacher, editor and educator, giving to us his ripe 
experience and judicious management, and has now been placed 
by church authority in charge of her general interests of 
education. 

Without haste, without hesitation, there is one now before us 
ready to formally receive the Presidential authority held so ably 
by others before him. 

A young man of thirty-five ; but one whose whole public life 
has been before our own eyes ; one with regal intellectual gifts 
improved by severe mental discipline, and with great power of 
physical endurance ; one who for more than ten years has been 
an earnest, laborious, successful Christian minister, with pulpit 
power known and recognized throughout the land ; one whose 
defense of the public schools and unflinching advocacy of social 
and moral reforms have left a deep impression on the public 
thought and conscience ; one who at -twenty-seven pronounced 
an eulogy upon the martyred president — the most illustrious name 
of this century, — with an analysis of character so accurate and 
complete, with such fitting words, as to be declared by Justice 
Porter, of the New York Court of Appeals Bench, worthy a per- 
manent place in our national annals and literature ; one who now 
for nearly a year has with marked success discharged the duties 
he is to formally assume to-day. The name you all know — Charles 
H. Fowler. 

The pleasure and duty alone remain, on behalf of the trustees, 
to hand to him, as I do, these keys, as symbols of the dignity, 
responsibility and authority of the President of the Northwestern 
University, with which jbe is now declared invested. 



Charge 

ON BEHALF OF THE CHURCH 



BY I\EV. EDy^UND G. ANDi\EWS, 

One of the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 



He to whom it would naturally have fallen to speak on behalf 
of the church a word of welcome to this newly-inaugurated 
President, is at this hour, as we suppose, sailing on the Pacific. 
By the West he seeks the East. He will soon, so please it God, 
be in the presence of the great Oriental civilizations, and become 
familiar with educational systems, which though comparatively 
narrow in range, and mechanical in method, are nevertheless of 
venerable antiquity and of great power. But he will look on no 
scene like the present. He will join no body of religious people 
who, out of loyalty to their invisible Head, gather to mark and 
assist the progress of a great University, founded by the liberality 
of faith, and consecrated to the pursuits of all knowledge under 
the auspices of religion. Nowhere but in Christendom will he 
find religion originating and guiding great systems of popular 
instruction, and crowning them with the college and the 
university. 

I. 

Let no one wonder that the Christian Church has been and is 
the foster-mother of education, the chief patron of the highest 
culture. It could not be otherwise, and yet be true to itself. 

In so far as education improves man's outward condition, 
stimulates his practical faculties, makes him master of the secrets 
and forces of nature, multiplies his resources, improves and 



10 

delights his taste, and brings him into harmony with natural law, 
Christianity, the great philanthropy, must approve and assist it. 
Even so the Divine Lord, journeying to the Atoning Cross, 
turned aside to touch blind eyes, to heal diseases, to console 
sorrow, to increase festal joy. Because the Earth and all that it 
contains are the Lord's, and because man is by that Lord set to 
know, subdue and appropriate this wonderful creation, and 
therein find, in part, his well-being, the church rejoices in the 
increase of useful knowledge, and the invigoration of the prac- 
tical faculties. It deems it not beneath the aim of the faith to 
encourage the study of all nature — of the soils and rocks which 
yield food and mineral treasures; of the atmosphere on whose 
condition physical health and the delights of vision depend; of 
the laws of vegetable and animal life; of mechanical and chemical 
forces which may be subsidized to grind in man's mills, or drive 
his chariots, or convey his thoughts; of astronomical truth; of 
history, language, social and economic law; and, in fine, of all 
science and literature, as gratifying a laudable curiosity, affording 
practical guidance, purifying the taste, and elevating the thoughts 
of mankind above coarse and brutal pleasures. 

But man himself is more important than his surroundings and 
accessories. He is the image of God. He may know God and 
be in conscious harmony with Him. His faculties, now infantile 
and weak, are destined to unlimited growth and range. Immeas- 
urable good or evil is before him. What outset in life such a 
being shall have is a question to which Christianity cannot be 
indiiferent. Itself has alone revealed the value of man — child of 
God, heir of eternity;^ and it cannot fail to commit all its intelli- 
gent disciples to such educational labors as will give to this 
embryo immortal the most hopeful beginning of his endless 
career. Its own immediate work is indeed with the moral 
nature — with conscience, faith, and love; but it would have 
these give law to intellectual faculties of the utmost vigor and 
sweep. It seeks, primarily, goodness, but it would have good- 
ness sway to God-like ends, the highest forces of which man is 
capable. Its ideal of character is not innocence, but positive 
and efficient benevolence. It does not admit the maxim of a 
perverted church: ."Ignorance is the mother of Devotion." On 
the contrary, it instinctively asks for light, the spread of knowl- 
edge, the discipline of faculty, as the condition of its own 



11 

permanent acceptance among mankind, and of the proper display 
of its own authority. It would not be king among pigmies. 

And further, Christianity is commissioned to rule the world. 
Not by force, by new political arrangements, by wealth or social 
influences ; but by the truths the truth clearly discerned and 
powerfully declared, defended and enforced. How shall this be 
but by the aid of educated mind! Education, therefore, is the 
indispensable auxiliary of Christianity. Not among the fisher- 
men of Galilee, but in the schools of Tarsus and of Gamaliel was 
trained \}[\& Great Apostle of the Gentiles, the Expounder of the 
Faith, the Author of nearly one-half of the Apostolic books. 
The Reformation was born in a German University, and was made 
possible only by a preceding revival of letters. From Oxford 
came the leading agents of the great revival of the eighteenth 
century. In an American College began, for America, the 
foreign missionary movement. These are but instances of the 
instruments which Christianity elects for its chief conquests. It 
summons to its aid all the resources of the schools. By History, 
by Science, by Philosophy, by Criticism, with Logic, with 
Rhetoric, with Eloquence and with Song must its truth be 
asserted and established. It does not disdain but rather wel- 
comes all helpers ; but the chief agents of its success are men 
whose ample natural endowments have been trained and invigor- 
ated in the schools. And hence, as for the reasons before men- 
tioned, it might be expected that the church would demand and 
create schools, and nurture them with loving, jealous care. 

II. 

"What might thus be expected of the church, it has not failed 
to do. Its history has no brighter page than that which records 
its sacrifices and success in this field. It rightly claims the honor 
of first instituting schools for the children of the people. As 
early as the third century, wherever the church was planted there 
rose also the parochial school. Successive synods and councils 
took them under its nurture, opened them freely to "all the children 
of the faithful," and made them a charge on the Cathedral funds; 
so that everywhere the public school was " the olispring and 
companion of the church." 

Luther urged on the Elector of Saxony and on the Municipal 
Councils of Germany the duty of providing schools and skillful 



12 

teachers for all the youth, in . order to secure both the safety of 
the state and the promotion of true religion, and he advised that 
the monastic funds be appropriated to this their original purpose. 
In conjunction with Melancthon he devised the " Saxon School 
System " and thus laid the foundation of that magnificent 
organization which is now recognized as the glory and strength 
of the German Empire. His work as a Reformer of Religion 
went hand in hand with his labor for popular education. 

In America the higher education is peculiarly the child of 
Religion. The seal of Harvard University, the oldest in the 
New World, bore the legend " Christo et Ecclesice " — to Christ 
and the Church. Yale began in the gifts of a few Connecticut 
clergymen, who, bringing each a few books from his library, said, 
" I give these for the founding of a college." Nor has the 
American Church in the lapse of years relinquished its purpose 
in behalf of education. Very instructive are the statistics 
furnished by the Commissioner of Education for the year 1871. 
Of the three hundred and sixty-eight colleges enumerated in his 
report, thirty only are known to be secular in their origin and 
management, while two hundred and sixty-one are known to be 
under the care of diiferent churches. 

But it may be asked whether the time has not come that the 
College and University, as well as the Common School, should 
be remitted to the nurture of the state, or at least to simply 
secular guidance. And this question is often asked with strong- 
implications upon church schools as being of necessity narrow, 
sworn to traditional error, and unfavorable to the truest culture. 
Leaving the implication to be resisted by facts that all may 
recall, we answer that Christian men will not be persuaded to 
relinquish the trust received from their fathers. Uniting with 
their fellow-citizens on the common secular school, they will con- 
tinue to found, endow, and govern colleges and universities in 
the interest of religion. 1. They will use the common school 
even though simply secular, because its work may be supple- 
mented by the home and the home-church, and thus the educa- 
tion of the child be far from a "godless education," a thing 
everywhere and always to be reprobated. But when they send 
their youth from home for higher studies, then they will insist 
that the college be neither hostile to Christianity nor neutral, but 
eminently fitted in its constitution, its teachers and its teachings 



13 

to develop a Christian manhood. 2. The studies of the uni- 
versity, unlike those o£ the common school, lead directly to the 
questions most vexed between Christianity on the one side and 
unbelief on the other. These questions must rise in the class- 
room when the laws of Physical Nature, Psychology, History, 
and Ethics are discussed. And the Christian must be pardoned 
if he insist that his son shall not seek answer to them under the 
tuition of men who ignore the greatest of all facts and forces — a 
personal God and a supernatural revelation, and in institutions 
so little in harmony with Christian -aims that they would not b'e 
out of place in a heathen city. 3. Moreover, to the college the 
church must largely look for the preparation of its ministry. In 
so far as it values learning and culture in its teachers and leaders, 
it is pledged to the sustentation of schools from which these 
shall come forth equipped for their great work. 

III. 

It is from such convictions, more or less clearly entertained, 
that this noble University foundation has been laid. It is from 
such convictions that this occasion of the inauguration of a new 
President commands the eager interest of so large and dis- 
tinguished an assemblage. We cannot be otherwise than deeply 
interested in the result of this hour's work. Gathered on this 
fair summer day in the presence of these noble structures, under 
the shadow of these academic oaks, with the gentle murmur of 
this inland sea breaking at our feet, we are thankful, hopeful, 
and yet gravely anxious. 

We congratulate you, sir, that you have been deemed worthy 
to receive the keys of an University so nobly begun and so full 
of promise. We congratulate you on its fair site by these waters 
and in the vicinity of the wonderful City of the West. We con- 
gratulate you on the amplitude of its endowments, the range of 
its plan, the results of its past work. We congratulate you on 
the indications recently given of a still existing liberality which 
will, we trust, be sufficient for all the demands which extending 
knowledge and multiplying courses of instruction may hereafter 
urge. We congratulate you that, as you enter this Presidency, 
the University admits the claim of woman to all opportunities of 
culture, and incorporates the Woman's College as an integral 
part of its educational system. 



14 

May I add that the church implores your utmost fidelity to the 
trust this day confided to you. It expects that so far as in you 
lies you will maintain this University as a seat of the broadest 
and truest Christian culture. Through a succession of years, it 
will demand from you and your co-adjutors bands of young men 
and women, disciplined in faculty, abundant in knowledge, and 
"strong in the faith which is in Christ Jesus." It gives to no 
man a more noble or conspicuous field of labor ; it will only be 
content with results proportioned to the dignity and power of 
the opportunity which it this day confers. And it invokes on 
you at this hour wisdom and strength from the one only Fountain 
of Good, even from Him to whose honor this University is 
reared. 



NAUpURAL AlDDRESS 

President of the Northwestern University. 



Time-honored custom requires of me, as I stand this hour 
upon the threshold of this vast enterprise, some statement of 
views concerning the work here undertaken. It becomes us to 
leave boasting to him that taketh off the armor, yet in putting 
on the armor it also becomes us to spy out the land — measur- 
ing the giants and counting the cities which the Lord, the 
church, and the public judgment expect us to possess. An 
institution in a community, that is to occupy the time and 
thought of scores of cultivated laborers, to control capital by 
the millions and expend its income by the hundred thousands, 
to build its walls for the centuries and plan its campaigns by 
the thousand years, to furnish a home for multitudes of the 
sons and daughters of the land in a critical time of their life, 
and furnish character for scholars and scientists, preachers and 
philologists, physicians and philosophers, jurists and states- 
men — an institution thus purposed and intrusted has a right 
to the public ear. 

Inducted by you into this honorable and responsible calling 
and office, and for the hour poised between the right of the 
public to hear and the right of the University to speak, I will 
sketch some of the reasons justifying the existence of the 
University — - some outlines of her work, some of the agencies 
and appliances by which she seeks to meet her obligations ; 
some of the results accomplished and some of the demands of 
the pressing future. 



16 



1. REASONS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF THE UNIVERSITY. 

1. By way of approach to this subject it may safely be 
affirmed that Universities are the fruit of advanced cmilization. 
Like abstract terms in a language, they imply much antecedent 
cultivation. 

It is a long journey from the Digger Indian taking his 
breakfast from an ant's nest with a sharp stick, up to the 
Christian philanthropist founding and maintaining a university. 
We ascend by many shining steps from savagery to the age of 
the earliest universities. But for the inspiration and guidance 
of the great school-masters, Thales, Anaxagoras, Democritus, 
Pythagoras, and Zeno the Elean, we had never wandered with 
the unsandaled Socrates, or lounged in the academy with Plato, 
or contended in the lyceum with the subtile and resistless 
Aristotle. The great schools are the growth of centuries. In 
raising them from the seed there is no short cut to maturity, 
but we may transplant or engraft and so condense the work of 
ages into a few generations. We took all the experiences and 
histories and theologies and literatures of England and Europe, 
and planted them in our new- world soil. The dews of a single 
night falling upon them gave us a rich civilization. So we 
can take the scholarship of the old empires and the faith and 
activity of the new republic and. hasten with them into the 
public squares to find the great institutions there before us. 
They seem the growth of an hour but they trace their pedigree 
through many centuries. Like great ideas, they must make a 
footing in the public conviction before they can become great 
centers of power. Some education, low in degree and narrow 
in extent it may be, pertains to intelligent existence. The 
knowledge of the simplest industries is within the common 
j-each. Fishing and hunting with the simplest devices; agri- 
culture with the crudest implements; architecture limited to 
the construction of wigwams and tents; navigation conducted 
on bark and skins — all these make up a part of education. It 
is only the foundation, but it is something. This becomes the 
common property by being a common necessity. Widening 
horizons, extending commerce, contact with other neighbor- 



17 

hoods, varierd experience, wars, dense populations, general 
interests elevate the scholarship. Then the front rank can be 
reached and held not by cunning but by patient calculation. 
Organized and premeditated education is then a fact. Ele- 
mentary knowledge perpetuates itself as it is forced into 
existence by the solution of the universal problems of bread 
and raiment. It descends from father to son with the certainty- 
of existence. Higher knowledge comes through two channels: 
first spasmodically, by gifted souls, prophets, poets, philoso- 
phers, or great thinkers. These come one or two in five or 
ten centuries as samples of the coming generations. They let 
the light down into the lower levels and set them on struggling 
up toward the larger measure. Second, persistently, by the 
wise appointments of organized, systematized, far-reaching 
educational plans that mature into great institutions. 

The germs of these in different stages of development are 
found among all thoughtful peoples. The light from the East. 
comes down to us in feeble and broken rays, yet strong enough 
and clear enough to indicate that the races at the foot of the 
Himalayas and in the valley of the Ganges had some great 
institutions before Jacob went down into the land of the Nile, 
or Abraham received the covenant. For these races had 
mathematics, and astronomies, and philosophies, and theolo- 
gies, and literatures probably centuries before Cadmus brought 
the fifteen fragments of Phoenecian and Assyrian characters 
into Greece, which in the next thousand years were built into 
the perfect alphabet and the wonderful literature. The Hebrew 
law-giver was trained in the schools of the priests of the Sun 
in Heliopolis six hundred years before blind old Homer, 
wandering along the shores of the Mediterranean, sang of 
Hector and Achilles. The compass of this Egyptian instruc- 
tion is indicated with some uncertainty indeed, but indicated, 
by the fact that Moses is said by tradition, according to 
Manetho, to have attained great proficiency and to have made 
discoveries in navigation, hydraulics, hieroglyphics, grammar, 
music, war, astronomy, surveying, political economy, linguist- 
ics, histories, and theology. He studied botany on Horeb's 
side, and geology on the summit of Sinai, and social science 



18 

in the wilderness. This was twelve hundred years before the 
Museum at Alexandria, the oldest state university in the world, 
had a manuscript, or a student, or a professor, or a foundation- 
stone. The school at Alexandria, on Egy]3tian soil, but niade 
out of the most splendid results of Greek genius and culture, 
was crowded with chairs in all the known languages and 
literatures and philosophies of the world, from Phoenecia to 
India, from Ethiopia to Rome. Here the Hebrew scriptures 
broke out of the sacred language into the tongue of the Greek, 
three centuries before Paul preached the risen Messiah on 
Mars Hill; and this center furnished scholars for the early 
church till nearly all European knowledge was consecrated to 
the cross. We have only to open our eyes on the past or the 
present, on the old world or the new, to see that the great 
centers of learning are centers of civilization; and we soon 
feel that 

2. Universities are essential to civilization. It may be 
claimed that Athens reached her glory without such instru- 
mentalities. But then, Athens herself was little less than a 
university; her youth were kept in the society of her scholars 
and statesmen, her philosophers and warriors. There is not, 
nor has there been, a university under the sun which would 
not be honored to count among her professors such minds as 
Aristotle, and Plato, a,nd Socrates. In her marts and along 
her streets her youth were taught philosophy by these great 
schoolmasters of mankind. Along her docks they were taught 
navigation, commerce, and naval war. In her streets they 
were trained to the highest taste in architecture. In her 
temples they were molded by the chisel of Phidias. In her 
theaters they were roused by the great tragedies and songs of 
Sophocles and ^schylus. In her assemblies they were trained 
in statecraft and oratory by Pericles and Demosthenes. Surely 
nothing was wanting in culture, in art, in learning, in patriot- 
ism, in poetry, in song, in precept, in society, in surroundings, 
to make the youth of Athens scholars by birth and philoso- 
phers by inheritance. 

' It is a significant fact that every people that has made a 
luminous spot in history has generated its light in the halls of 



19 

colleges and universities. Rome had the Athenaeum as the 
head of the schools she scattered with her eagles. Italy, once 
the mother of letters and of genius, ranked as queen among 
the nations till her schools lost their power by losing their 
liberty. In the thirteenth century a school flourished in 
Bologna. This university was founded by Theodosius in 425, 
and restored by Charlemagne. Roger Bacon, the good friar 
known as the admirable doctor who ventured to study natural 
science and spend his fortune and that of his friends in experi- 
ment and in alarming the church with what they called witch- 
craft and the black art, who stood as the foremost man of the 
universities at Oxford and Paris in natural science for more 
than three centuries, till his great namesake, Sir Francis, 
came — this man tells us that in 1262 there were in Bologna 
over twenty thousand students. Be it said to the credit of 
Bologna that a woman, ISTovilla Andrea, in the fourteenth cen- 
tury, was professor of canon law, and Clotilda Tamproni was 
professor of Greek in our century. 

The university at Paris was started as a monkish school in 
792, and made over and widened into greater usefulness in 
1200. It had at one time in the sixteenth century thirty 
thousand students. Oxford was bom in the ninth century, 
and Yienna in the fourteenth. These have carried France and 
England and Austria up to the summit of their glory. The 
honor of Grermany to-day is not chiefly in the victorious march 
from Berlin to Paris, but rather in the great universities, from 
Prague to Berlin, which have been fostered by the national 
spirit, and have in turn fostered that spirit, and have thus 
made Germany a synonjan for greatness. 

Italy to-day has twenty-one universities and two hundred 
and seventeen seminaries. 'No wonder that Popery has lost its 
advantage, and in the light of these cities which cannot be hid 
poor Italy finds her way back to unity. Spain has no great 
school. The dust of oblivion is a yard deep and a hundred 
years old upon her ancient universities. Importing her 
scholars, she must also import her liberties, if she find them. 
Russia has seven great growing universities. Already the 
great Northern Bear plays to win. Yitalize that great host 



20 

with inventive manufacturing brains, and nothing will be 
impossible for Russia. Switzerland supports three universities, 
Holland three, Belgium four, and Denmark two. England 
and Scotland remind us of Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh. 

The United States has scattered the seed of universities so 
thickly over this continent that a Yankee emigrant can hardly 
stop his wagon to camp for the night but there will spring up 
from the warm earth where he slept a university, or at least a 
college. A civilization without great schools would be as 
impossible as saints without virtues or angels without songs. 

It inheres in power to gravitate to centers, and thus, by a 
law as old as the universe, it draws all things to itself, either to 
conquer or assist. Turn such a soul as Saul of Tarsus into a 
city or state, and he will soon find Stephen and the synagogues 
and the Sanhedrim. Luther could not break out of his cloister 
and straighten up under the open sky without seeing Melanc- 
thon and the giants of the earth. Great men and great ideas 
become centers of power up to which all the ambitions and 
aspirations in the nation turn their hurrying feet. Then you 
have a school, call it as you may. Mankind will never dream 
of crediting any people with civilization unless they bring 
forth the fruits meet for such character. There must be litera- 
ture; pure, vigorous, masterly, elevating. There must be art 
and art's refinement in taste and manners; humanities that 
illumine the dungeon of the convict, and sweep the alleys of 
the outcast; charities that light up the wretched at home and 
give them ideas with which to conquer their wretchedness, and 
that reaches the sinking, no matter how far off, and gives them 
truths and revelation with which to transform their characters. 
All this requires cultivated brain. It is impossible to have 
high civilization without great universities. 

3, Universities are rendered necessary hy the general intel- 
ligence. There remains the same demand for leadership, if 
there is to be advancement. 

The sage-brush desert, though far above the sea-level as the 
summit of Mt. Washington, is none the less a flat, monotonous 
and weary waste. The army of lions must have the supreme 
lion to lead. The herds of wild horses, fleet as the wind, must 



21 

somewhere find a leader swift as the lightning on the morning 
breeze. Fill the land with schools, and books, and presses, and 
free pulpits, and somewhere you must have universities. 
Power must gravitate to centers. The republic has, according 
to the census of 1870, 507 colleges and 2,209 schools for higher 
education, and 125,059 common schools, employing 221,042 
teachers and teaching 7,209,938 pupils. These vast figures 
only put a fraction of the world of education. These children 
come from all the homes of the country; they return from the 
school-room to kindle on the hearth the fires of holy ambition 
borrowed from the public luminaries. A quarter of a million 
of teachers turned loose among forty millions of people must 
revolutionize every community. Add to this work the faith 
and heroism of 72,459 preachers, and you have an army beneath 
whose tread the continent trembles from sea to sea. Put into 
the hands of all these workei's 45,525,938 books and 1,508,- 
548,250 copies of periodicals, and you have transformed the 
republic into a literary society and the nation into a reading- 
room. It is the glory of this country that science shines into 
our common homes and philosophy flourishes in our shops and 
factories. The path to power runs by the pooi* man's cot, and 
the honors of scholarship may be carried ofiT by hackmen. All 
this renders almost imperative the demand for universities and 
colleges. The school-room, the pulpit, the editor's chair, the 
senate chamber and the supreme bench must be filled with 
highest culture and profoundest scholarship, or leaders must be 
found elsewhere and the scepter pass from the tribes of Judah. 
We are at the confluence of the great races; streams of 
ancient blood are flowing into our veins, and all the literatures 
of the most varied civilizations meet and mingle in our atmos- 
phere. The invading multitudes disembark in the darkness 
of each night and by the light of each new day. They hourly 
land in every bay and bayou of our ten thousand miles of water 
front. Capital comes for investment, poverty for bread, light 
for a candlestick, and ignorance comes for light. We have 
room enough for them; they cannot run down our wild herds 
for many a year yet, and we have single vales that can feed 
mankind for a thousand years. But the press and the pulpit 
2 



22 

and the school-house must be manned by trained and, tireless 
minds, "fhis means training-camps, universities, somewhere. 
4. The controlling minds of history h<Mie heen trained in 
the schools. True, there are many noble exceptions to this 
rule. There stand Franklin and Marshall and Washington, 
who make the republic honorable by their histories. But all 
these were strengthened and sustained by scholars and books 
of scholars. There are self-made men who may well feel proud 
of their work. Indeed, I think that no man is more than half 
made who does not make himself. But not more than one 
man in a million can do a good job with poor tools. You can 
get flour out of wheat with a mortar. But I prefer a grist- 
• mill — it grinds finer, faster, and more economically. Thus it 
happens that nearly all the undying literature comes from pol- 
ished pens — from the Addisons and Miltons, from the Pitts 
and Sheridans, from the Popes and Whateleys. Take out of 
our own literature the work of our scholars and you open a sad 
gulf. All but ten of the signers of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence were trained in universities and colleges. More than 
one-fourth of the mem])ers of the ISTational Congress from the 
beginning to thie day have been graduates of colleges. This 
fact, taking the ratio of population and graduates, shows that 
the colleges have given their graduates more than thirty chances 
to one. The histories of the White House and of the depart- 
ments of government, and of the supreme bench, add emphasis 
to this statement. Jhese facts call to the aspiring youth, " so 
run that ye may obtain." 

5. Universities stimulate thought. They create an atmos- 
phere in which a dictionary or a blackboard or a compound 
blowpipe is necessary to a peaceful existence. They make all 
the gales and breezes blow toward books and brains. Make 
pul)lic sentiment and you can kindle or quench the iaggots, 
build or destroy the inquisition, perpetuate or exterminate the 
despotisms. Human nature is weak and takes readily to rest; 
men are lazy. The spur of competition and the sting of 
threatened defeat help flagging zeal and so quicken thought. 

6. Universities are the friends of true religion. They 
increase and disseminate light, and the truth seeks the light - 



23 

it needs exposure; it has nothing to dread. These schools turn 
the attention more toward the higher nat^^re. In the struggle 
waged in everj bosom they are for the immortal instead of the 
animal, on the side of the angel against the tiger. There is 
little trouble about keeping up the lower industries; there is 
no shirking them, they must be carried on. I^ature guards 
them under penalty of death. Men will eat and seek eatables 
urged by no other argument than that nature has lodged in 
the stomach. But to lift them to higher aims and inspire them 
with noble purposes is not so easy and is something toward 
exalting their character. It makes larger footing for the truth. 
Open a library or a school in a community and you transform 
the amusements and the industries and the markets. The 
bull-fight and the tournament give way to the reading-room 
and the lecture-hall and the sanctuary. The arrow maker and 
the tent maker are superseded by the architect and the engineer. 
Men are set on restraining their lower propensities. They see 
the day-after-to-morrow and plan for it. Soon this checks 
worldliness and sets them in pursuit of eternal results — tones 
up society. Thus let one boy or girl in a community start up 
toward knowledge and soon a goodly procession will be moving 
that way. Every step up brings them' more clearly within the 
reach of truth. 

In a more definite but not more certain way tbe university 
furnishes the great defenders of the church. Providence may 
use weak instruments, but they cannot remain weak — the 
very use builds them into greatness; so God prepares great 
workers for and in great work. The schools of Tarsus were 
not second to those of Alexandria, and the school of Gamaliel 
was well fitted to continue the training of the great apostle to 
the Gentiles. Clement and Origen studied in Alexandria; 
Luther was a professor in the University of Wittemburg; and 
Melancthon was a noted professor of Greek. The reformation 
was committed to the foremost scholars of the age. Calvin 
was quite a university in himself. Beza was no mean scholar. 
John Knox graduated at St. Andrews. The late reformation 
that gave the world a new evangel was marshaled by such 
scholars as Wesley and Fletcher. Their song was taken up by 



24 

the Clarkes, the Bensons and the Watsons. A multitude rose 
up, and, fired by heavenly zeal, ran down to the battle almost 
as they were when they heard the first blast of the bugle. And 
there they did valiant service and the slain of the Lord were 
on every hand. 

True these men did not stop to dig the oi'e out of the moun- 
tain and smelt and fashion it in their own furnaces. But they 
did take the weapons furnished by Wesley and Clarke and 
Watson and the great leaders. But for these equipments they 
would have been scattered in the first hour of battle like down 
before a whirlwind. 

7. TJniveTsities lighten the hiwdens of mankind. Most of 
our heavy lifting and wearisome carrying has come from our 
dullness and ignorance. We have been forever taking hold in 
the wrong place. It is beyond all computation how we have 
aggravated our inherited disability. We have thrust around 
in all directions as if hunting for the laws of our well-being 
simply, or chiefly to violate them. If any one can doubt our 
fall in our great ancestor it must be because the multitude of 
our falls since leave no demand for a first fall to account for 
our deformity. 

Doubling the channels of inheritance by each generation as 
we go backward it only takes a few centuries to tap all the 
races and drain in large supplies of distemper and leprosy and 
scrofula and insanity and perversity. I do not wonder that we 
have dwarfs, and cripples, and idiots, and criminals. It seems 
a greater wonder that we do not have more. But for the 
remedial agencies set at work by infinite mercy we might not 
have had anything else long before this. As it is we have 
reduced our life from nine or ten hundred years to thirty years 
and in heathen lands to fifteen years. Just of late by studying 
and keeping the laws of our well-being we have turned back 
toward longer life. The great schools have added fifty per 
cent, to our life and thus doubled our work day. This has 
been achieved by three economies: First, by stopping the 
violation of nature's laws and so diminishing the waste; 
second, by lessening the strain upon the vital force and so 
husbanding our strength; and third, by creating greater sup- 



26 

plies of vital force in the more skillful use and production of 
nutritives. All these economies are the products of cultivated 
brain. They are born of scientific investigation and experi- 
ment. Since the medical schools introduced the rational 
system of investigation, and forsook the empirical methods 
that prescribed by streets instead of by individuals, and bled 
all in one street and physicked all in the next, without the 
least reference to the disease, age, or symptoms of the patient — 
since this change, medical sciQnce has revealed the secrets of 
our constitutions, and has put us in a way to resist waste and 
destruction. 

The results of careful thought are now abundant in the sub- 
stitution of machinery for muscle. In Great Britain each 
individual has the average service of nineteen servants. ISTo 
wonder tliey can have better food and raiment and more culture 
than the Hottentot who has only his empty hands. Peasants 
have more comfort to-day than could have been found in the 
palace of good King Arthur. In the age of Bacon and Shake- 
speare there was only one pair of silk stockings in England, 
and they were kept as sacredly as the crown jewels. Yesterday 
a respectable copy of the Bible cost twenty-five thousand dol- 
lars, and could be owned only by wealthy cathedrals and peers 
of the realm ; to-day you can get a plainer and better copy for 
twenty -five cents, and the poorest man in the country can have 
one if he wants it. Thought has entered every field of industry, 
from the pantry of the house-wife to the navy -yard of the 
nation, from the chamber of the sewing-girl to the cabinet of 
the president. It has seized upon all toil, from heading a pin 
to heading a locomotive boiler, from cutting the eye of the 
needle to cutting the Mont Cenis tunnel. Where is the speed 
of Mercury compared with the lea23 of the lightning? Samson 
is weaker than a babe when contending with a jackscrew. 
What is Hercules' lifting against gun -powder? What show 
would there be for David's sling against a needle-gun? This 
vast multiplication of machinery prepares the way for the 
multiplication of products. While the earth can produce 
game and berries only for one ten thousandth of its inhabit- 
ants, the valley of the Mississippi, under the brain of genius 



26 

and in the hiand of skill, can keep in luxnry all the sons and 
daughters of Adam. It was a long journey in the manufacture 
of raiment from the fig leaves of Eden to the seamless garment 
of the Nazarene; but it was inconceivably further to the 
weavers from Brabant who settled in York — of whose art 
King Edward said, " It may prove of great benefit to us and our 
subjects." The Indian cotton cloth mentioned by Herodotus 
cost nearly as much as the same number of square feet 
of the Holy Scriptures before the days of printing. But Gray, 
and Hargreaves, and Arkwright put their brains at work, and 
now it is mach cheaper to wear cotton than to wear nothing. 
Attach a bench of sewing machines to those factories, and then 
throw in your wool and your cotton, and by the time you can 
wash your hands from the shearing and the picking you can 
find whole suits of the finest fiber and the fairest fabric, fitted 
to your every wrinkle. Meantime your wife, instead of spin- 
ning, like the wife of Tarquin, who made a garment for Servius 
TuUius that was preseiwed in the Temple of Fortune; or like 
the wife of Csesar, who clothed the world's emperor in " home- 
spun," but was " above suspicion" — your wife can give her 
time to the government and inspiration of her sons and 
daughters. 

Yesterday it required whole years to get word from Africa or 
Asia, and an infinite faith in the sailors, who described lands 
without touching them, and in the map-makers, who scattered 
mountains and deserts according to fancy and regardless of 
fact. But to-day, let a duke smite a serf anywhere in Russia, 
or let an Arab's horse stumble on the desert, or let a servant 
take the plague in Egypt, or let a Modoc shout one note above 
the regulation in America, and nearly every family in the civ- 
ilized world has all the particulars before the next breakfast. 

Communications make communities. This must soon em- 
brace mankind. When we get so close together that no two 
can fight without endangering all the rest, the rest will not let 
the two fight. 

The great thinkers have taken hold of the problems of bread 
and raiment, and distance and time, and government and des- 
tiny, and have so solved them that we now have room to grow. 



27- 

and right to spread, and time to think. Thus the outside avoir- 
dupois burdens have been lifted from our shoulders by the 
forces generated in universities and institutions of culture. 
But the great relief has been in unloading the soul from igno- 
rance and superstition, and bad theology and bad government. 

Individual culture has made room for individual character. 
This has brushed away the priests of superstition and the sacri- 
fices of guilt and the veil of ignorance, so that each man in the 
V temple of the universe has been taught to come, in the priest- 
hood of his humanity, with the offering of his faith and affec- 
tions, to the open and accessible mercy-seat. To describe the 
work of the schools in lifting the burdens of the race would be 
to write a. history of mankind. 

8. Universities are the friends of the republic. They are 
the fountains of intelligence. They are the great reser- 
voirs that supply the common schools with teachers and 
text-books, and the result of scientific experiment and philo- 
sophical research. Trained teachers are more necessary 
than trained carpenters or artisans. We do not let a man bore 
a board or drill an iron until he has served an apprenticeship, 
lest he bore or drill in the wrong place. What shall we not 
require of him who bores or drills the minds of our children'^ 
Without universities, institutions of high training in some 
form, we cannot long maintain common schools; without com- 
mon schools we cannot maintain general intelligence; without 
general intelligence we cannot maintain our liberties. The 
universities of th'e colonies gave us Jefferson and Adams and 
Hancock. While we owe mucli for such men, we owe more for 
the ideas and schools that came with them. 

These underlie our liberties. Scylla offered Rome freedom ; 
but she chose a despot. Cromwell tried to plant a republic; 
but England wanted another Stuart. France cannot maintain 
a republic until she educates her peasantry. And our republic 
will not survive our intelligence. 

The power of these institutions is comprehended by the des- 
pots of the earth when they attach to the sovereignty the 
control of education with the power to coin money, issue 
currency, levy taxes, declare war, accept peace, and make 



28 

treaties. The study of the history of the United States was 
suppressed by royal edicts in the universities of Europe. As 
late as 1858 Prof. Luigi Philippi was imprisoned for com- 
mending the study of our constitution. The legates of the 
Pope conditioned JSTapoleon's advancement to the empire on 
his swearing on the cross and gospels to maintain an army in 
Rome for the defense of the Pope, to appoint as Minister of 
Education the nominee of the Jesuits, and to suppress the 
study of philosophy in the University of Paris. Kapoleon 
took the oath, the confessionals were opened for him. The 
coup d'^etat followed, and the Pepublic went down under the 
Empirp. This indicates how the world's great intriguers and 
men who cause things to come to pass have estimated the 
power of universities. 

9. Universities qualify men for the learned professions. 
This is done in \NfO ways : First, directly, by furnishing instruc- 
tion and advantages in the specialties of these professions (to 
this we may refer again). Second, by preparing and develop- 
ing the mind to enter upon intellectual labors worthy of Intel- . 
lectual leadership. It is the old and eternal question of 
preparation — Can the eagle mount above the storm without a 
practiced pinion ? There is indefinite and infinite fluttering 
between the eagle beating about in the nest and the eagle 
tracing secants on the circle of the whirlwind. The camel is 
born in the desert. Bred in the valley of the Mississippi, his 
posterity might not be more enduring than the ox. The racer 
that wins is petted and practiced, and pruned and pushed. The 
Arab says, " Steeds are made of barley and the road between 
Medina and Mecca;" that means the best food and the longest 
run, 180 miles in one day — preparation and practice. Profes- 
sional success lies beyond the stormy desert; he who would 
reach it must soar'like the eagle above the storms. Life is not 
a holiday trip ; the only sure help is ability. Professional men 
are employed, not for friendship, but for results. The ministry 
is the most nearly an exception. And even this becomes a 
matter of business. If you can succeed, you can stay; if you 
cannot, you must make room for some other man with an 
equally divine and more human call; for the individual is 



29 

nothing, the cause is everything. Lawyers are engaged only 
when we cannot help it, and few people amuse themselves with 
doctors and ipecacuanha. Therefore you must beat against the 
storms. To win in any substantial sense you must mount like 
the eagle, endure like the camel, and run like the racer. The 
increase of intelligence will intensify the competition. The 
great work will be given to the great workers. Men will make 
more careful preparation. I know a youth with rare gifts as a 
mathematician, and he has gone quite thoroughly into German 
and French, simply to have access to the German and French 
mathematicians. He must win. What men must have in 
professional life is victory. What is .fiye or six years additional 
study compared with having the chances all on your side ! for 
it is the last inch that makes the tallest man. 

10. Unwersities are jprofitable in dollars and cents. What- 
e,\<di' improves the grade of civilization increases the security of 
society. Whatever increases the security of society enhances 
the value of property. In another line the measure of profit is 
the value of thinking industry. A man with a first-class shovel 
earns two dollars per day; with a first-class pulpit, twenty dol- 
lars per day; with a first-class newspaper, fifty dollars per day; 
with a first-class railroad, two hundred and fifty dollars per 
day. This is for management, outside of capital. Wlio can 
estimate the commercial value of such a brain as Beeclier's, or 
of such a head as Mrs. Stowe's! She so enriched the Southern 
soil that it will produce one hundred bales ol cotton instead of 
one, and it shall grow school-houses instead of shackles, 
churches instead of slave-pens, asylums instead of auction- 
blocks, college professors instead of criminals. Put all the 
seaboard cities under contribution to an ironclad war ship, or 
lay them in ashes at the will of the foe, and you fix some crude 
estimate of the financial value. of the brain of Ericsson. But 
who can compute the value of Di'. Olin, or Horace Majui, or 
John Quincy Adams, or John Wesley, or John Banyan? 
Wliat shall we say of the multiplied arts and sciences and 
inventions of civilized life, and of the liberties and institutions 
of free government! When we rise into the fellowship of these 
forces, it seems almost blasphemy against the moral sense of 



30 

mankind to suggest mere commercial estimates. But here 
stands the great fact: All that a man hath can he give for his 
higher life. We conclude this branch of the subject, reiterating 
the facts that universities are the fruits of advanced civilisation; 
that they are rendered necessary by general information; that 
they have trained the controlling minds of history; that they 
stimulate thought; that they are friends of true religion; that 
they lighten the burdens of mankind; that they are the friends 
of the republic; that they qualify men for learned professions, 
and that they are profitable in dollars and cents; 

II. WHAT THE UNIVEESITY IS TO DO. 

1. We answer in brief — teach all knowledge. Possible 
knowledge is so vast, and approachable ft-om so many sides, 
that we hardly feel enlightened by the answer. It takes nar- 
rower form in the process for self-development in all depart- 
ments of our feeing. There are two kingdoms over which man 
must be enthroned — the inner kingdom of powers and facul- 
ties and possibilities; this must be subdued, organized, devel- 
oped — made into the aggressive army for the subjugation of 
the outer kingdom of facts, forms and relations. The vast 
amount of knowledge that must in some substantial wa,j be 
made accessible and available by a university seems too pro- 
digious even for enumeration. Single departments have 
grown larger around the waist, and taller in cubits, and deeper 
in foundation, than were all the departments two centuries ago. 

The University of Paris in the sixteenth century, with all 
her thirty thousand students and corresponding army of pro- 
fessors, would not come up to a first-class preparatory school 
in the variety and extent of its requirements. They crowded 
some kinds of work to excess. Think of twenty thousand stu- 
dents, as at Bologna, studying the canon law and solving the 
profound question of precedence! There is more power in a 
single Why? that may prostrate a class or teacher in the ele- 
ments of philosophy, than in all the old curriculum. They 
backed a student up into a corner of his cell and opened his 
mouth and crammed him with decretals and anathemas and 



31 

legends and saintly miracles, packing them down with the 
ramrod of anthoritv, till his soul was dead and his heart was 
dead. There was no room to question but in the dungeon, 
and no chance to grow hut at the stake. A single Wliy? 
which would only encourage a professor in yonder citadel of 
freedom, would have split the civilized world and have ruined 
the theologies of a dozen centuries. 

To-day the idea of a university reaches the outer verge of 
knowledge. Standing on this green sod, beneath these brave 
old oaks, by day or by night, any man or woman can face uj) 
to the sun or to the stars, or to Him who sits beyond both sun 
and stars, and ask Why? concerning any fact or precept on 
earth or in heaven, in this world or in all worlds, for time and 
for eternity, and no leaf nor speck of mist will fall in wrath, 
and no blade of grass nor tenderest violet will wither in dismay. 
Here, standing on this open page of God's great work, we can 
call Him father and ask Him Why? and He will take our 
trembling hands in his and gladly lead us into all truth. If 
the question were what shall a particular student study, it 
would be necessary to elect for him. For one mind in the 
short day of this life could no more master all knowledges than 
one mouth could eat all food. A general acquaintance with 
the whole range of knowledge is consistent with an intimate 
knowledge of some parts. Because it is general it need not be 
vague. It may comprise the leading features and be definite 
and positive. But when the question is what shall be furnished 
for all minds, then the answer comes without seeking'. 

A college may be built about a single department of truths ; 
but a university must embrace all colleges, and so seek all 
truths. It is easy for some men to poise on a point and swing 
around like a girl making a " cheese," till, inflated, they think 
themselves supported on all sides; but venturing, they fall 
down into emptiness and expose their folly. Think of a scholar 
described by Sidney Smith, whose great ambition was to 
" detect an anapaest in the wrong place, or restore a lost 
dative!" Think of the sweep of a soul like the vain and osten- 
tatious Dr. Parr's, who listened to the great Pitt as that states- 
man in one of his memorable speeches defended the coustitu- 



32 

tion and very existence of Britain, and when asked how it 
impressed him, replied, "We threw our whole grammatical 
mind upon it and could not discover one error!" One Dr. 
George declined to admit the greatness of the Frederick of 
Prussia, because he "• entertained considerable doubts whether 
the king, with all his victories, could conjugate a Greek verb 
in {iiiA)r He did not see that the king knew how to illustrate 
upon the stage of royalty the verb eimi — to be — and bring 
out its full meaning amid the rout of armies and the ruin of 
empires. 

A university must make accurate men, but she must seek to 
make them men of the century and of the latest telegram — 
men able to interpret events, and plan on the field of action; 
men whom circumstances cannot desert, who can read the hand- 
writing on the wall and dare to translate it in any court. The 
university cannot become a partisan in the controversies of 
competing studies, but like a mother she must cherish them all, 
giving each the security of a fair chance, and let results and 
advancing judgment of the age settle all questions of superiority. 

It is consistent with this impartiality to state the reasons 
sustaining the several families or classes of studies. 

2. The Classics demand our first attention. There are 
worthy scholars and experienced educators who would not ad- 
mit this question as a debatable one. They say that " the 
memory of man runs not to the contrary," and that " the 
usage has been sanctified by time." But it is sufficient answer 
that the old laws of granite give way when the earthquake 
comes. Nothing is exempt from the law of revolution. Un- 
less the ancient customs can show better reasons foi- continuing 
than mere antiquity, they must cease. The classics have held 
the position of power for centuries ; but that may be a question 
of age rather than merit. At the revival of knowledge after 
the dark ages, Latin was the vernacular of the church and of 
scholars. There was not much else to teach. There was no 
science beyond the physical works of Aristotle even as late as 
the sixteenth century. Clinging exclusively to the classics now 
because they were once adopted when there was little else to 
adopt, is like clinging to the crooked stick of (yincinnatus be- ' 



33 

cause he chose it for a plow when there was nothing else to 
choose. It may further be stated that objections have been 
urged against the study of the classics in every country where 
they are studied, and often by men familiar with them. In 
Germany they were for a time excluded from the schools. 
They have been reinstated. As long ago as 1827, Yale College 
appointed "a committee to report on the expediency of dis- 
pensing with the study of the dead languages^ They reported 
adversely, but they reported. Essays and books have been 
written and published on both sides of the question. To-day 
the modes of instructing and the extent of instruction are be- 
ing modified. But the controversy is not a losing one for the 
old culture. Classics are in more danger from over-zeal than 
from all other causes. The test that must determine this ques- 
tion is utility. If the study of the classics is useless as an in- 
strument of education in completing the character and outfit 
of a scholar, then it cannot hold its place. The danger, then, 
is in urging it for purposes for which it is useless. 

To crowd the classics upon every student without regard to 
age or his aims; to hold a smattering of Greek and Latin 
before a knowledge of English, in cases where only a limited 
amount of that can be taken ; to hold that it is better to decline 
the Greek article or a Latin adjective than to understand the 
principles of political economy — better to recall the history of 
the growth of the Greek particle than the history of the repub- 
lic; better to measure a line of Homer or of Horace than to 
measure the resources of the continent — all this is folly, and 
must work against the classics. To maintain that there is no 
door into the world of thought but through these dead tongues ; 
that the highest mental powder cannot be approximated in any 
way except by the study of the remains of these two peoples, 
is asking too much, of the countrymen of Marshall and of 
Franklin and of "Washington. To refuse the honor of scholar- 
ship to a man who is familiar with the "' unread manuscripts of 
God," because he is unread in the manuscripts of Plato; to 
withhold credit from him who can analyze the soil on whifeh 
we walk,- and the food on which we liA^e, because he cannot 
analyze a sentence in the preface of Livy, or a chorus of 



34 

Sophocles, are decisions that will hardly be maintained by the 
judgment of this century and of the American peoj)le. Danger 
of error lies in the reaction from those overstatements. Here 
as in most controversies. the truth lies between the extremes. 
The objections may be reduced to a few general statements: 

{a) That the classics are Pagan. Yes; but that is only a 
name. They are from human sources, and full of human 
power. It is not a question oi origin, but of contents; not 
whence 'i but what ? The light of the Star of Bethlehem fell 
first on Pagan eyelids; and the supreme blessing came upon 
Abraham, the father of the faithful, from the hands of a 
wandering high-priest of heathenism, (li) That they are 
imjyare. Yes, in places, but not as a law. There are but few 
passages worse than some passages of Shakespeare, or than 
some statements in the Bible. The classics as encountered in 
modern text-books and courses of study are not open to this 
objection, and scholars roaming at large in the fields of litera- 
ture can find sewers and Gehennas if their taste leads them 
that w^ay. "■ To the pure all things are pure." (c) That they 
are of no %ise. This depends upon what you mean by use. If 
you mean that you will not care to handle them in the count- 
ing-room, nor in the factory, nor yet the drawing-room, then 
they are not of use. But very little else is of use, measured by 
that standard. Beading and spelling, and writing and grammar, 
aud arithmetic through interest and proportion, are all that 
are required. Pat having these usable elements, with his 
shovel or whip is as well qualified for life as the man in the 
office or counting-room. The fallacy lies in what is meant by 
use. Thinking that only those rules which you repeat are of 
value is no wiser than the street gamin who wants half-raw 
potatoes because they do not digest and do stay in his stomach. 
The food that is of use is that that comes out in bone and 
muscle and tissue and blood and brains. The knowledge that 
is of use in training is that which gives compass and vision 
and judgment- and patience and persistence and power. 
(c?) That few students lihe the classics. Possibly; but all like 
play.. "Would it do to substitute base-ball, boating, etiquette, 
and twilight rambles, as more popular pursuits? Then those 



35 

who do like the classics have rights which a university is bound 
to respect, (e) That the classics have only to do with vjords 
instead of things, and make word reTneTnhereTS. Yes; but 
words are also things. Corner-lots, sewers, tunnels, ships, 
homes, breadstuff's, shovels, and shanties are no more certainly 
things than Homer's battles about Troy, or the navigation at 
Salamis, or the " Epitaphs on the plains of Marathon," or the 
spirit that broods over Thermopylae. To remember the mean- 
ing of words in a Latin history or poem is no more an act of 
memory than holding tlie names s^nd classifications in science. 
The man who reads and understands the orations of Cicero 
against Catiline, or of Demosthenes against Phillip, is no more 
a word remembei'er than he who reads and understands the 
oration of Webster against Haynes, or Sumner against slavery. 
The limited amount of time and attention given to the classics 
in American colleges removes all ground of objection based 
upon the practice of English universities. 

The time for study in all our schools is too short. We 
are in too great haste, to succeed in making great scholars. 
The Greeks in the days of their glory kept their sons 
in training thirteen years. The Jews under Divine com- 
mand kept their sons in school eighteen years, not counting 
the preparatory work of the first twelve years of their 
life. It is not uncommon for European universities to re- 
quire twelve years in Greek and sixteen in Latin. There is 
a line of argument defending the study of the classics that 
may justify to the impartial mind at least as much study as 
we require, whi(^ is not more than seven years, including the 
preparations, and this not to exceed one third of the time in 
those seven years. This justification will be the more certain 
when it is remembered that the scholar is not limited to tlie 
classics, but is urged from these and with the power they give 
into all the fields of knowledge. (<») The use of the classics 
in discipline is one of their strongest defenses. They are 
adapted to the earliest stages of mental life. Philosophy, met- 
aphysics, and the generalizations of natural science, all require 
more strength than the beginnings of language. Our earlier 
efforts after observations are in acquiring language. The 



OD 

classics take hold upon us with a gentle but fii-m hand, and 
lead us up into vigor. The variety of action gives strength 
and nimbleness to the faculties; fitting the square words into 
the square holes, and the round words into round holes, devel- 
ops judgment. The transferring the thought into good English 
gives accuracy and taste; commanding the meanings of the 
words and the principles of their government, strengthens the 
memory. Memory is one of the divinest gifts; it underlies all 
scholarship, and progress, and identity, and accountability. Its 
cultivation is no mean part of education. It is not all of it, 
but it is involved in all of it. The Latin and Greek are so 
wonderfully framed together, so complex and logical, that 
handling them operates on the thought as exercise in the gym- 
nasium on the muscles. There are certain qualities of drill 
that can be reached better by Latin and Greek than in any other 
way. Mathematics tends to give the faculties point ; languages 
breadth. Mathematics asks the exa,ct point of intersection. 
Languages ask a dozen questions concerning varied meanings, 
rules and exceptions, gender, number, case, person, government, 
and the like. This work is not so fully done by modern lan- 
guages because they are not so compact, logical, fixed, and dis- 
similar from our own. The order' in which the languages are 
of service in discipline, it seems to me, is this: Latin, Greek, 
German, and French, and so down the simshiny and moonshiny 
tongues of the warmer zones. While mathematics drills to 
the point of attention, natural sciences as a study, as sciences, 
require more discipline to undertake them profitably. The 
matter of observation, mere gathering of matterial, the begin- 
ning of natural science, precedes all other training, but it is 
feeble as a means of discipline. It is shared with the sheep 
that hunts the gum weed, or the ox that retraces his steps to 
his master's crib. Language comes in between the extremes 
of natural science, i. e., after its instinct of observation, and 
before its generalizations and discoveries as science. We can 
hardly overestimate the value of discipline. It is like strength 
to the productive industries; it is better than mere knowledge, 
as the ability to create a fortune is greater than the ability to 
own it when it is given to you. As " goodness is better than 



37 

good acts," so mental power is better than mental furniture 
Prof. Davies, a distinguished instructor in mathematics, long 
at West Point, and author of a series of text-books on the sub- 
ject, after an experience in Columbia College, said " that in his 
judgment those young men who had been trained in the classics 
could master the mathematics as satisfactorily in' two years, as 
others without the training could in four years." Julian the 
Apostate forbade the study of classics in the schools of Chris- 
tians, that the defenders of the faith might not be trained 
scholars. These are windows through which you can get 
glimpses of their training power. C]ilture is a good in itself, 
even though you cannot realize on it in Wall street. Yet in 
the market of eternity it shall lack no bidders. It is like per- 
' fection of muscle or of organization that never comes to con- 
sciousness till some weakness or irregularity manifests itself. 
A good digestive apparatus never reports its existence because 
it never reports anything. If it cries out, it is because it can- 
not help it. The more perfect our health, the more unconscious 
we are of its existence and value. ISTevertheless, health is a 
good jper se. So it is with culture — it is a good per se. It is 
like beautiful scenery about a city. You may not be able to 
grow potatoes or barley on the hillsides, yet they are worth 
having. Go back twenty miles into the level of this over-rich 
and productive prairie, drop down a mountain with rock and 
rivulet and with gorge and chasm, and place at its foot a laugh- 
ing little lake to mirror its majesty and double its beauty and 
altitude. Or bring the Yosemite valley into this county. 
Though " El Capitane," and the " Dome of Liberty," and the 
" Cathedral rocks " never produce a blade of grass or a spear 
of wheat, though the " Bridal Yeil " falling nine hundred 
feet, and the " Ribbon fall " leaping thirty-five hundred feet, 
never turn a wheel or drive a spindle, yet I will insure you a 
city there. It will charm the world like the eye of the desert 
— that oldest city of the world — Damascus. Men will be 
drawn there by the magnetism of its beauty. So go into the 
dead level of our productive industries and create a spirit of 
advanced culture, plant the graces of beauty and of taste, culti- 
vate the virtues of peace and domesticity, and even though yOu 
3 



cannot grow potatoes in your parks, or Avheat on yonr lawns, 
yet 1 will insure you a city and society there. Men will come 
for the fragrance that floats on the evening breeze, and for the 
peace that stands guard over their children. 

The culturing qualities of the classics, not only in giving 
mental discipline, but also in enlarging the student, widening 
his horizons, making him consciously the heir of all the ages, 
justify large expenditures of time and money in their study. 
If Socrates had not forbidden us to put truth to a vote, this 
view could be supported by such men as Victor Cousin, Sir 
William Hamilton, and Dr. William Whewell. But I must 
pass on, only indicating other arguments developed by the long 
controversy. 

(h) The Classios open out way into valuable knowledge of 
the earlier stages of human society. Words are often embalmed 
customs. An adage may contain whole theologies. An axiom 
may preserve whole systems of government. In the search 
for pre-historic man, as we stand on the most ancient records 
and peer back into the darkness of savagery, any fable or myth 
floating by may give us a hint of truth; any song coming out 
of the gloom may direct us to the secret of our search; any 
custom or social habit or crystalized prejudice that lies beyond 
may be of great service. Whoever would search the old regions 
must take the torch of old languages to read the epitaphs. He 
must have eyes to see the old monuments, and ears to hear the 
voices from the old sepulchers. For he searches for secrets 
which none but God and the mighty dead can reveal. 

(c) The Classics enable us to note the origin and descent 
and growth of ideas. This is the marrow of history and the 
juice of philosophy. The force of the New Testament doctrines 
is vastly augmented by giving them the advantages of their 
historical growth. The spring that oozed out of the garden of 
Eden where Abel offered his lamb, grows into a brook, then a 
river — a resistless tide bearing up the Lamb of God and all 
mankind. 

(cZ) The Classics gwe us insight into Greeh and Roman 
forces that largely mold otir civilization. This is a Christian 
civilization, but in doctrine it is grown upon a Hebrew root. 



39 

Its tone is from the Qi^eks, and its form still shows the mold 
of the Romans; the old wooden plow has now a steel point, 
and the coat of mail has grown into a casement for a whole 
crew. Legislation and government at home and abroad are in 
the old lines. Greek and Roman thought is woven into all 
our customs ; it makes up a large per cent, of our culture. An 
English statesman might as well be ignorant of the rights that 
took root on the field of Hastings as for an American scholar 
to be ignorant of our inheritance from the old civilizations. 

{e) The Classics help us to a knowledge of our own tongue. 
Trench says that thirty per cent, of the words used in our lit- 
erature are derived directly from the Latin; probably as many 
more are derived indirectly from the same source. Let u§ not 
have foreign and unexplorable regions in our own tongue. 
Our literature is full of classical allusions that can l)e under- 
stood only from the forum near the Tiber, and from the Acro- 
polis at Athens. 

{f) The old dead tongues give us finest inodels and stand- 
ards of taste. The fathers of English classics lived on Greek 
roots and wore Roman clothes. Go to the Yatican, compare 
modern statuary with the fragments and specimens of the aft 
that have come down to us from the age of Phidias - that will 
illustrate a higher fact in letters. We can learn perspicuity 
from Livy, compactness and vividness from Tacitus, simple ele- 
gance from Csesar, life and light from Homer, majesty and dig- 
nity from Yirgil, and the perfection of art from Demosthenes. 
He who would perfect himself in English must have access to 
these ancient fountains. 

{g) The Classics lead us furthest vnto the philosophy of all 
languages. Thus it happens that the knowledge of Latin gives 
us the secret of all the modern languages. With this start a 
student can acquire a modern language in one fourth of the 
time he could without this knowledge. If I had to furnish a 
lad with four or five modern languages, I would prepare him 
for application by drill in Latin. In building a great temple 
the best investment is in derricks. I know an extensive con- 
tractor for painting and frescoing who makes his margins out 
of his complete system of scaffolding. For he says that " a 



40 

ten-dollar workman soon wastes a scaffolding in clambering up 
and down ladders." In finishing off thi^ living temple with 
modern tongues it pays to hold the workmen at advantage with 
a broad footing in classical culture. 

(A) The study of the Classics aids in mastering many other 
hranohes. Strength to handle sacks of wheat can be used to 
handle sacks of coffee. Every added church in a city full of 
material helps all the other churches. Every branch of industry 
developed in a community makes work and chance for other 
branches. Every hundred thousand people added to the popu- 
lation of a city adds another layer of greenbacks to the busi- 
ness property. Almost every science is labeled in Latin or 
Greek. The very names of classification involve this knowl- 
edge. As in the days of the Csesars all roads led to Rome, so 
in knowledge if you would go into any field the shortest route 
is by the way of Rome. 

\i) The Classics lie on the threshold of the learned profes- 
sions. The lawyer can hardly enter or open his case without 
encountering terms that have refused to be translated. The 
physician can hardly write a prescription without plunging out 
of sight in an unknown tongue. No matter if the writ of the 
officer is not more terrible, or the mixtures of the physician 
more abominable, on account of the dead languages used in the 
process, there the facts remain. Whoever will get the kernel 
out of the nut must break the shell. The theologian is sealed 
up to these languages for his authority. The words he is to 
repeat and the good news he is to tell, fall from heaven in a 
strange language. However little he may care to display the 
original he ought to have the key to its secrets. It was not 
enough for me that a fellow student should read to me my 
father's letters; I wanted to read them first. It seemed to my 
young heart, so far and so many years ffom home, that I could 
see his form more distinctly while following the lines his aged 
hand had traced. Now and then my eye caught a dash or a 
blister on the paper that told me the great truth as nothing 
else could. I knew as I choked down the unutterable longing 
and turned again to my work, that though I might be shoving 
up out of boyhood, and he might be bowing toward age, still 



41 

his love followed me morning and evening, and his prayer car- 
ried my name iftto the holy of holies. So with the letters 
from our great Father; the preacher ought to read them first 
hand. There are signs, accents, silent letters, finger-marks, that 
tell the story as nothing else can. They open the gates and 
expose to our longing eyes the streets of gold and the palaces 
of fire and thrones of light. We gaze upon the King in His 
glory. He embraces us as a father. Our hearts feel the new 
life, and our lips touch the holy fire. 

{j) The study of the Classics is of effi^cient service in per- 
fecting the orator. This theme impresses me more profoundly 
as I advance in years. Speech is a divine gift, the chief char- 
acteristic of the human animal. It is the chosen instrument 
for the evangelization of the world. " By the foolishness of 
preaching" is the inspired order. While the church lives and 
men and women are assembled once or twice a week to hear, it 
can never be a secondary matter hoM^ the speaking is done. 
Horace says, " The poet is born, not made." I say of the orator, 
he ought to be born twice at least and then made. It is a sig- 
nificant fact that all the great orators have been great students 
and deeply versed in the classics. Demosthenes struggled more 
to master his disabilities than would be required to master any 
curriculum in the land, and his orations show a thorough 
acquaintance with all the knowledge of his time. Cicero made 
oratory his chief study, secured the ablest instructors, studied 
all. the models from the past, practiced daily in Greek oratory 
as well as his mother tongue. Pitt and 'Fox were both trained 
by wise fathers who were themselves orators, with special 
reference to public speaking. They were steeped in the classics 
from early childhood. Both were almost as familiar with 
Greek and Latin as with English — reading, criticizing, study- 
ing the masterpieces of the ancients all through their years. 
Webster, wlio has extorted the honor of being the prince of 
orators, committed Cicero's orations to memory and kept him- ' 
self familiar with the best classical culture. 

The habits and studies of these men indicate on what the 
great orators feed. In this republic, where all interests of 
society are to be determined by popular assemblies, it is of the 



42 

utmost importance that Christians and patriots qualify them- 
selves to control these assemblies. I tarry to add emphasis to 
the value of this power. I know that its public and ostenta- 
tious character has brought it into disfavor among many 
scholars. But I am thankful that the Northwestern has made 
special provision in this department in a way not surpassed, if 
equaled, by any of the institutions of the country. As we 
must have a vast amount of speaking, and increasingly so since 
the women have found the rostrum, let us see to it that it has 
the best foundation and divinest inspiration. 

This argument is sufficient to indicate that large room must 
be made in a university for the ' study of the classics. Not 
every young man is adapted to these studies, nor will every 
young man be greatly profited by them. There is a large 
demand for cultivated brain and skilled labor in every depart- 
ment of life, and only part of the workers would be advantaged 
by the study of Greek and Latin. But there are large fields of 
mental activity where this training and knowledge are indis- 
pensable. When the age and circumstances and gifts of a 
student will admit of such a course, I would train' him in the 
classical course as a mere cult are and preparatory course. 
After that let him enter upon his professional or special course. 
Few men have any ability or culture to spare. The great work 
of life is untouched because no one is found worthy to open the/ 
sealed book. Men worry about place when they ought to 
worry about ability. There is no lack of opportunity. There 
are fifty pulpits in the land as good as the Plymouth pul- 
pit. But where are the Beechersf Where are the men? 
There is room enough under this western sky for the tallest 
scholars of the age. But where are the men? Where is the 
material out of which to make them? There is no lack of 
demand and opportunity. There is too much room at the top. 
Brother, fit yourself for the kingly work, and Grod will send 
the anointing prophets. Humanity stumbles on in the dark- 
ness. The good cause languishes, and God patiently waits. 
Where are the workers? I wish I could sound this question into 
every home in the land, till the dreaming youth and slumber- 
ing maidens would leap from their repose, and make everlast- 



43 

ing covenant with heaven, saying each one for himself, " Come 
what may, wall, or wave, or mountain parapet, or fiery gorge, 
or rushing flood, or devouring death; come what can, I will 
obey the divine command, and move forward with the pioneers 
and scouts along all the lines of thought and up all the sum- 
mits of knowledge." 

The world is full of babes and children. We want men — 

GREAT, STALWART, IRON-.JOINTED, BROAD-SOULED, FATHOMLESS, 

summiitless, diA)inely -anointed, God STmtten, hingly men, to 
whom death or failure shall be forever impossible. This will 
take time, and it cannot be done by a short cut. It means 
patient and weary years. But what of that? Have we not all 
the future? Are we not immortal? We start out of the 
preparation of these years to march along the eternal ages in 
association and comparison with powers, and principalities, 
and dominions, and thrones of heaven. When I think of mj-- 
self poised on my purpose, encased by my freedom, inspired 
and vitalized by the Eternal Spirit, standing up before God 
among the ancient ranks of being that rally around His throne 
and support the pillars of His government, then the chances 
of this life and the toil of time put on new majesty, and I rise 
to my kinship with God, and believe nothing impossible to him 
that willeth and believe th. 

• 3. ISText after the classics it may not be amiss to mention 
the Modern Languages as having a right to a place in the 
appointments of a university. While they are hiferior to the 
classics for drill and in perfection of structure, they still have 
certain compensating advantages. They are the tongues of 
living people. We meet them in the street and in the mart, 
and in the caucus and convention. But more than this, they 
are crowded with the richest results of research and science. 
Charles Y. said, "So often as I learn a language, so often I 
become a man." Happily there is no need to prepare the pub- 
lic mind for these studies. 

4. Mathematics claims an ancient inheritance in the uni- 
versity. It would be difficult to exclude this science, if we 
would. We could find no weapon to smite either student or 
professor that did not involve the science itself, for it enters 



44 

into all our living. Building is preceded by the study of pro- 
portions and quantities and strength of materials. Machinery 
(and everything except breathing is done by machinery) is only 
solved and illustrated problems. The drill in this study, from 
addition to the computation of the orbit of the double stars, is 
unequivocal. The student who cuts a paraboloid of revolution 
from a given cone will not need watching while his work lasts. 

5. The Natural Sciences have crowded themselves into the 
curriculum, and have maintained the struggle for existence 
with marked success. They are of nature, and are in league 
with events. You might as well argue against shadows, object 
to earthquakes, forbid eclipses, and anathematize comets, as to 
resist natural sciences. The i-eal question is not whether we 
will admit them to the course, but rather will they leave any- 
thing else in the course. Protestantism cannot oppose any 
science, but superstition may well do it. Like God's revealed 
Bible, natural science will put down superstition unless super- 
stition puts it down. If her people study science, that will 
ruin the saints and the decretals. If they do not, that will ruin 
them, for tliey cannot compete unless they have equal chance 
in discoveries and appliances. Thus in either case the doom 
of superstition is fixed. The physicians, next after the restless 
and robbed heart of mankind, have been the great enemies of 
superstition. The new-culture men are now in the field as their 
allies. The only course for Christian intelligence is to accept 
the situation, welcome all light, walk down into the new field, 
and find God back of the last analysis. 

6. The Technological courses are the consummation of these 
advancements in science. They are schools of knowledge 
instead of culture. They aim to apply the sciences; they not 
only tell how it has been done, but they do it; they rely upon 
experiments ; they claim to fit a man for life. As a chemist he 
can verify all the theories by experiment. In physics and in 
all departments the student must test by appliances all the 
theories of science. In natural history he is expected to be 
familiar with every rock, and stick, and weed, and to have an 
acquaintance with every bird that flies and fish that swims; to 
know intimately, or to have been introduced to, every kind ol 



4.5 

reptile and insect. Such an acquaintance cafinot be gained in 
the half-hours of the old-culture course. Days and years in 
the midst of the best appliances, under the inspiration of truth, 
hunting on the fresh track of some new law skulking in some 
neighboring thicket or glen — these are necessary to give this 
department an insurance of results. 

This cause needs an advocate no more than the almighty 
dollar needs one. Courses of training that deal wholly with 
the arts of living, with* the production and manufacture and 
transportation of the necessities and comforts of life, can 
always justify their existence in a practical community. You 
cannot go into your house or into your office without the 
ministration of these senses. The proportions of beauty and 
of strength that make your home safe from accident and attrac- 
tive to your eye, come from the appliances of science. Every 
article of raiment, every mouthful of food, every tint of beauty 
and form of use, every appliance of comfort and article of 
luxury, comes from scientific skill. Wherein it succeeds it is 
of science — knowledge of nature's laws. Wherein it is outside 
of this knowledge and these laws, it always fails. There is not 
one question of our well-being in the whole field of our activity 
that is not touched and determined by science applied. It is 
estimated that nature unaided would support only one in ten 
thousand of her cliildren. Think of the machinery that toils 
for us and carries the burdens of humanity. Yonder island 
shivers under the motion of six hundred millions man-power of 
unconscious industry. Not a wheel goes round, nor a punch 
comes down, nor a hammer falls, nor a saw starts, nor a knife 
cuts, nor an auger bores, nor a tool moves, nor a shuttle flies, 
nor a spindle sings, but it is an illustrated principle in science. 
Do you telegraph to your office, to your factory on the branch, 
or to your consumer on the other side of the world? That is 
the perfection of science. I never send a dispatch but I feel as 
if we were leaping the impassable gulf between us and the 
infinite. But telegraphing is not the whole of science. Your 
morning paper that brings to your table every part of the 
known world and reports of the slumber and safety of almost 
every individual on earth (for if they are not mentioned we 



46 

know that nothing has happened to them) needs something 
beside the telegraph to actualize it. The paper must come by 
machinery that hears and obeys our wishing. Foundries must 
toil on every hand. Laboratories must experiment and ana- 
lyze and combine for given ingredients of this result. Power 
presses, things of life that could take a distinct piece from each 
postoffice under our flag and still be short by several hundreds 
of pieces, these great presses must be fitted into perfection. 
Then, too, all the gigantic machinery *of the railroads must be 
in perfect order to consummate the enterprise. Let a switch- 
man oversleep or a wheel leave the track, and all the other 
appliances are frustrated. In short, your morning paper is a 
late blossom on the stalk of civilization, and but for the inven- 
tions and victories of science it would not be possible. The 
college of technology concerns itself altogether with the knowl- 
edge of these sciences and their application to the questions of 
life. It also touches life in a most vital way. "We are in the 
midst of mysteries that are ready to be solved, and are sur- 
rounded by powers that are waiting to be used. All that we need 
is to wake the magician that can break the spell of our blind- 
ness, and we shall see more helps than we have ever yet 
mustered. There is fuel in the air; somebody must cord it up. 
There are railroads and steamships in this sea above us; some- 
body must build the depots and the docks. There is air for us 
in the sea; somebody must make us as good chemists as the 
fish. Provide auvand fuel, and the vales and glens of the 
ocean might make good summer residences. The great 
truth is this — we are only at the threshold of possible 
knowledge. 

This college of technology purposes to furnish the keys and 
lanterns for further discoveries. It can also do great service 
to the state — now requiring more natural science to be taught 
in the pUblic schools — by opening its laboratories during the 
summer vacations and giving seasonable opportunities for the 
great company of teachers to perfect themselves for their duty. 
The college of technology offers a course of studies sufficiently 
protracted and searching to justify the bestuwment of the. honors 
of the university. 



47 

7. School of Theology. This has always had a place in the 
university. Universities are the out-growth of more ancient 
schools for religious instruction. Kot only have these teachers 
been abreast of their times, but in all early ages they have 
monopolized and controlled the learning. To-day the advance- 
ment in knowledge gives the ministry no alternative; they 
must study or go under. 

8. Department of Law. This needs no defense in theory, 
though it may need emphasis in practice. This profession has 
always been held in high esteem, and facilities for its improve- 
ment are seldom wanting. But at no period in the history of 
our civilization has there been greater need of exalting and hon- 
oring this profession. Possibly the pulpit and the press do 
most to mold public sentiment, and so make free government 
possible. But next in power stands the bar. The honor of 
the country is quite as much in their charge as in any other. 
The legislatures of the country in its different parts are con- 
trolled by the bar. The final appeal is always to the bench, 
and without an honorable and learned bar it will be impossible 
to maintain a worthy and unimpeachable bench. The weak 
place, the place of final trust and authority in our government 
is not in the second term nor in the third term of the executive, 
nor is it in the conservative senate nor in the volatile house. 
But it is in the supreme court. "We have witnessed legislation 
changed, nullified, extended in the interest of localities and 
prejudices, by opinions of the bench. We can illy afford to 
lower the tone of this supreme authority. The streams that 
fill this sea must be purified and exalted in character and honor. 
The bar — not second in manliness and honor to any other 
profession — must be reinforced by scholars and Christian men, 
men with views of public interest broader than personal am- 
bition and wiser than selfish schemes. ' Christian patriots can 
well afford to put their treasures into a college for law in a way 
to secure the most exalted and honorable management. A 
man great in his profession and great in his character, from the 
head of a law faculty could make a great impress upon these 
Northwestern commonwealths, and render incalculable service 
to the republic. From such a throne he might call into being 



48 . 

a body of learned men who would so mold the public mind 
that financial lobbying would be understood to be what it is — 
not professional service, hut hrihery,' and special legislation 
would rank not as statesmanship, hut as treason. All honor 
to an honorable bar! Let the university come to its steady and 
persistent support. 

9. The Department of Medicine is one of the essential ele- 
ments of a university. Even when it had few of the character- 
istics of a science ; when it merely observed and guessed, seek- 
ing for arbitrary remedies; when no small part of professional 
power was vested in semi-incantations and charms ; and when 
the wiser men of the profession relied upon nature and nurses 
on account of their helplessness, knowing that they really knew 
next to nothing — even then the schools were founded, and 
flourished. It is the interest in this science, and these the 
goodly thinkers that have illumined the profession, that have 
made this science what it is — one of the foremost philan- 
thropies of the age. Though medicine has an ancient and hon- 
orable place in the very idea of a university, yet I cannot dis- 
miss this branch of university work without adding my 
appreciation of a class of men who endure all hardships, 
sacrifice all personal liberty and brave all dangers for 
the comfort, and well-being of others. Their work allies 
them to One who went into soul-healing through body- 
healing. 

10. Dejpartm^ent* of Philosophy. This is germane in its 
construction and history, but is more general in its character. 
Philology, in which, it has been sarcastically said, " the vowels , 
are nothing and the consonants not much more," is growing 
into large proportions. History is enjoying a revival. It is 
turning its searching glare, not chiefly to what a few kings did 
and said, but to what was dotie and said by the people. It is 
becoming a narration of their customs and codes, a description 
of their food and raiment, an insight into their houses and 
temples. Here, too, must be classed English literature, that is 
forever rapping at the doors of the university, asking to be al- 
lowed to crowd out the older studies. Political science, called 
thus because it usually involves neither politics nor science, is 



49 

studied in every government, and by every man who trades, be 
it ever so little. 

Moral and intellectual philosophies, challenging the world's 
thought ever since the world had any thought, still plunge on 
in fathomless seas, and the fine arts, in all their old and new 
phases touching the elegancies and melodies and rythms of 
life, giving a finish and perfection to civilization, are only in 
their infancy. All these and many others that might be enu- 
merated make up the department of post-graduate studies and 
investigations that must find a home and advantages in the 
university. 

III. THE MOKAL AND RELIGIOUS CHARACTEK OF THE UNIVERSITY. 

This concerns either man or God, and this part of the sub- 
ject may be arranged about these two centers: 

1. The university v%ust he no respecter of persons. Her 
advantages cannot be conditional upon complexion, blood, or 
sex. America has outgrown all doubts on color and race. 
There may linger some concerning gender. These cannot long 
remain in the increasing light of this age. Nature is older 
than the oldest American university, and when it becomes an 
issue between these parties the friends of fair play need not be 
in doubt as to what will be the result. This week we have a 
rumor, which, true or false, will prove a prophecy, that Nature 
has triumphed, and the women enter old Harvard. Co-educa- 
tion begins by God's plan in the family, and is continued in 
the public school, and no one objects. It is folly to fear more 
as danger diminishes. Without creating distinctions which do 
not exist except in our thought or in our customs, we will be 
safe in assuming that there is no danger that our daughters 
will know too much. We do not need to legislate against their 
intelligence. With the doors open before all, there will follow 
without regard to sex the endeavor of the most aspiring, and 
the " survival of the fittest." Opportunity is often ability; a 
chance is often a victory. Without reference to the old doctrine 
of appetency, experience demonstrates that motive and oppor- 
tunity for a given activity in any class or community develops 



50 

capacity for that activity. This law holds over the education 
of women. In 1863 the University of Cambridge reluctantly 
consented to admit Englishwomen to university examinations 
with a view to give them definite standing as teachers. At 
the first examination ninety-one candidates presented them- 
selves, of whom fifty-seven failed ; two years later one hundred 
and thirty applied, of whom only twenty-eight failed. This 
succeeding ratio' has steadily increased till now the examiners 
nearly always accredit the girls with the most thorough acqui- 
sitions. The demand for a fair and equal chance hardly needs 
argument. The republic says "any one that can, may;" ex- 
perience says intelligent men must have intelligent wives. 
The mother more frequently than the father transmits the fiber 
and character; nature requires that great men should be pre- 
ceded by great mothers. A slave mother in Tennessee by in- 
dustry and ability purchased her own and her children's liberty. 
She went to the Methodist preacher in the town and said, " I 
am free; I have three sons; where can I make men of them?" 
He said, " In Liberia." She went; one of the sons return- 
ing to America graduated in medicine in 'New York and be- 
came the ablest physician in the republic of Liberia; a second 
son became the first colored bishop of the M. E. Church-; the 
third son became the first president of the republic of Liberia,. 
There was a vast amount of stock in that " old black woman." 
I recall but two other fountains so full of greatness: one on 
the island of Corsica, — the mother of the Bonapartes, that 
gave to Europe revolutions and emperors; the other on the 
island of Great Bi-itain — the mother of the Wesleys, that 
gave to mankind new hope and a new evangel. I crave for my 
country more than all things else, mighty mothers ; given these, 
and Columbia shall stand a thousand years and nothing shall 
be impossible to her. 

2. The university must he a Christian institxition. Chris- 
tianity presents a vast array of facts. With but few exceptions 
it has written the histories, inspired the books, sustained the 
schools, and developed the civilizations of the world. Its sacred 
books are the noblest and oldest classics, and its conscious ex- 
perience is as much a subject of investigation as any other class 



' • 51 

of facts. The reports of cousciousness concerning conscience 
and spiritnal comfort and spiritual testimony are as worthy of 
thought as the reports of consciousness on any other state of 
mind. The facts of prayer are as well established as the fact 
of gravity. The fact of transformed character, of kindled 
affection, of exalted purpose, of heroic living, of triumphant 
dying, are as much facts as the growth of vegetation or the 
circuit of the stars. A university must give these great classes 
of facts a fair chance. ^Vliile it is demanded that the church 
must accept facts and abide by results, it is not too much to 
expect the same from universities. On the supreme subject 
there is no excuse for evasion or ambiguity. The trumpet must 
give no uncertain sound. "While we welcome all facts and all 
light we accept Christianity as a fact and Christ as the light of 
the world. We do not arraign the apostles before the bar of 
the university and keep them on trial for perjury ; but we send 
them about their work. The university stands for the defense 
as well as for the discovery of truth. In virtue of her charter 
she is under obligations of loyalty to the interests of the re- 
public. These are the interests of a Christian nation, for such 
we have been from the beginning. We were born out of the 
struggles of conscience. We came here exiles for conscience. 
The Declaration of Independence recognizes our inalienable 
rights as from God. We hold days of thanksgiving to Grod. 
Public officers take oath in the name of God.* Legislative 
assemblies have chaplains. The army and navy have chaplains 
as commissioned officers. The state exempts church property 
from taxation, and protects the sanctity of the Sa*bbath. Black- 
stone says, " Christianity is a part of the common law of Eng- 
land," and our state enacts the common law of England. And 
Daniel Webster, in the Girard will case, said, " Christianity is 
the law of the land." This Christian nation has a right to ex- 
pect that the educational institutions will be Christian, It is 
difficult to understand how universities can be anything else. 
They take the youth of the land from family altars in the form- 
ative period of their lives. They are under most solemn obli- 
gations to shield them as far, as may be from the floods of 
temptation that threaten to overwhelm them. And more than 



52 

this, the youth need the partial support of the gospel. For in 
this land, in the light of the Sun of Righteousness, mere mo- 
rality divorced from religion has no more warmth than a painted 
fire, and no more life than a mummy. God's Son came as the 
revealment; Christianity aiid knowledge were joined by eternal 
decree, and it is too late in the centuries to divorce them. 
Learning has always been the friend of Christianity. The 
e-reat torches that illumine the centuries behind us were kindled 
by the fire on the holy altar. I would rather lay our founda- 
tions on a southward floating iceberg, or on the crest of a vol- 
cano, or on the heaving bosom of an earthquake, than to con- 
secrate them to irreligion, immorality, and skepticism. Under- 
stand me — I lift my voice for Christianity, not for sectarianism. 
I regard sectarianism as disguised skepticism ; it doubts the 
truth; it rends the seamless garment; it is a whited sepulcher. 
Denominationalism has its place in providence, but not in a 
university. Inside the university the religious convictions of 
every student must be sacred. The different Christian churches 
must be able to send their children here without endangering 
either their faith or their virtue. 

IV. THE COMPONENT PARTS OF A UNIVERSITY. 

These may be briefly sketched as the agents and the instru- 
ments — 

1. The agents comprise the individuals that make up its in- 
telligent force. , 

{a) The Trustees precede and underlie the other agents. In 
the simpler forms of civilization and in more genial climes a 
solitary old philosopher sitting in the shade of a tree, or wan- 
dering by the banks of a stream, constituted an institution — a 
university in a very limited range of the idea, and a very 
poetical and extended use of the word philosopher. But in 
this civilization there must be organized and actual and death- 
less corporations, touching all sides of society and life. This 
something called a university is incorporated and lodged in a 
board of trustees. This board receives power and funds in 
trust for educational purposes. They do their work through 



53 

delegated bodies under general directions. They commit busi- 
ness to an executive committee that centers around an agent. 
They do their instruction by another committee known as the 
faculty that centers around the president. The trustees are no 
small part of a university. They may be open to advice from 
the president, but the final power of action is with them, and 
in this power inheres the responsibility. If the university fails 
they are to blame. If it succeeds to them will belong the 
praise. Their committees may do the work, but they are the 
instruments of the board. Another fact supporting this view 
of the responsibility is this. The final force under God is 
money. With money competent professors can be secured, 
suitable buildings can be erected, and all helpful and needful 
apparatus procured. This money power is vested in the board. 
They must then be men who know how to create and how to 
use money. They must call it out of the air, or dig it out of 
the earth, or pull it out of their pockets, or resign. It must 
come from somewhere; and they have no more right to hold 
the post of trustees and not furnish the funds to the extent of 
their ability, than the professors have to hold their places and 
not do the teaching. They must be men of courage and faith 
and ambition ; courage to undertake great enterprises, the faith 
of Columbus, and ambition to achieve results worthy of this 
age and of this latitude and longitude. The first question is 
money. Brothers, this we must create. There is money enough 
in the church and in the patronizing territory. We are to com- 
mand it. While it is an honor to be a trustee, it is more than 
honor, it is a holy trust from the church, which must be met 
under her supervision and under the eye of God. 

(i) Professors are an indispensable part of a university. 
Tutors and instructors may do for certain work, but they can- 
not take the place of professors. The Professor must be a man 
with the sixth sense that will help him always in advance. As 
Melchizedeck met Abraham returning from the slaughter of 
the kings and blessed him, so the student must meet the pro- 
fessor returning conqueror fi'om advanced fields and so con- 
strained to bless him. He must have but one all-absorbing 
purpose, and that his work. He must have the light of a single 
4 



54 

eye. He must have the vision of a prophet, thus to surprise 
the secrets of the king's bed-chamber. He must have the scent 
of a bloodhound, that neither rock nor air and hardly flood can 
foil, thus to pursue truth. He must be able to live on promises, 
for not more than once or twice in a score of years will he find 
a kingly germ. Like a saint he must grow richer as he declines 
in fortune. Like a lunatic he must grow happier as he recedes 
farther from his goal. Like gravity he must be incapable of 
wearying, and sleepless as the tall angels around the throne. 
It is not necessary that he should go to his recitation-room like 
iSTeander with a servant following him with his pants; or that 
he should go into his "lecture-room like Dempster with his collar 
wrong side before; or that he should crush his hat in his desk 
and put his manuscript on his head like Thompson. But should 
any of these things transpire, the man, the soul and brain, must 
project so far that it shall fill up the omission. 

(<?) The students are the thii-d class of agents. The ideal 
student never comes, the actual student is what we want. He 
is a compound of opportunity, application and ambition. The 
chief element in this part of the agency is numbers. Then out 
of a thousand some will be tall enough to be seen round the 
world. This tallest one fixes the reputation. This question of 
numbers is largely in the reach of the trustees. It is under 
the great law of supply and demand. Make appointments for 
a thousand students and soon they will crowd into your halls. 
It is like any business — the great fortunes are made by whole- 
sale dealers. The margins in real estate have been on acre 
property. You can handle a large church more easily than a 
small one. You can handle a great university more easily than 
a small one. 

2. The instruments only need enumerating. Foremost is 
that which is most difficult to command — money. This is as 
necessary as air. The blessing of God is above all else; with- 
out that we had better disband. But the blessing of God is a 
fixed factor. He comes into all open hearts and upon all help- 
ful institutions. God is all right, waiting for a chance for 
something to bless. He comes upon universities as certainly 
as water seeks the sea. This constant factor being present the 



65 

first contingent element is money. There can be no progress 
without it. It is the stimulus of this war. But it should 
always be remembei-ed that it is of value only as a means and 
not as an end. It is a trust fund— a fund in trust for an ob- 
ject. And its only value is in procuring the appliances for that 
object. This includes hmldings. There must be provision 
for recitation and lecture rooms and laboratories and dissecting- 
room and observatories and art galleries and conservatories and 
museums and libraries and chapels and dormitories and other 
necessary buildings — not last or least among which is an 
American gymnasium. All these buildings need furnishing 
and this includes a vast amount of illustrative apparatus. 
Where in the haste of this hour I have failed in asking, the de- 
liberate wisdom of the trustees must not fail in giving. Thus 
far I have considered some of the reasons for the existence of 
the university — the work she is to do, the spirit in which she 
is to do it, and her component parts. Much of the argument 
has been so condensed as to be but little more than a table of 
contents. Though the details have hardly been touched, yet a 
university puts on vast proportions. Only God can measure 
the privileges and the responsibility. 

V. WHAT THE NOKTHWESTEKN UNIVERSITY HAS ALEEADy REALIZED. 

We cannot avoid asking- this board of trust, these professors 
and this great company of /riends. What has the Northwestern 
done? Is it justifying its claims to univeisity honors? Let 
me pause here long enough to say that my sympathies are with 
weak institutions where noble and godly men are toiling and 
starving in the interest of the ca,use of God. Knowingly I 
would not add a feather to their burdens. I only ask in the 
interest of young men and of the church that confides in them, 
that they will push up their standards to the highest point, and 
when a man graduates that he shall have had a full chance. 
An institution has a right to be a college even if it has but 
one course of study, but one idea; more than this, it has a 
right to be a university, provided its faith sees in the future 
the various departments of instruction. Institutions are usually 
born both young and small; time corrects the first mistake, but 

.L.fvfC. 



56 

tlie otlier is too apt to become chronic. I pray God to deliver 
them all from this calamity. Every institution that honestly 
does its work helps so much. Every torch and taper helps to 
confound the darkness. Yet I must ask, Is the Northwestern 
justifying her university honors ? In reply, I will only state 
what she has accomplished. Her history is brief, measured by 
the pointers of thie clock. It is only eighteen years since she 
opened her doors to students. There are other measurements 
more just as well as more imposing. The first notable accom- 
plishment was heing horn. There is hardly a state in the 
Union that has not great institutions whose first trouble is in 
failing to be actually born. The Northwestern, carried for 
years in the brain of the president of trustees, and in the hope 
and courage of the men I see here to-day, came to individuality 
in the ofiice of Judge Goodrich, in the city of Chicago, on the 
31st day of May, 1850. She was consecrated by praying and 
devout men to the cause of God, and from that hour has been 
pushing steadily up into her plans. 

2. She has also a site. Once in the world, the university 
had to be somewhere, and here she has been for years. If the 
foresight of the founders had been as good as their judgment 
and experience, they would not have gone anywhere else. Here 
all things converge. Just out of the great city, and so out of 
its dust and din and saloons and great temptations, yet near 
enough to command the springs of being and the ^inews of 
war, we are in the center of the church and of the continent 
on this highway of the nations — in this great valley that could 
feed mankind and yet shall hold populations by the hundred 
millions. Our climate is cool enough for a summer watering- 
place. Our little city is both healthful and accessible. Every- 
thing in the site is realized. 

3. Foundation. This means in all departments about two 
million dollars. The ground has grown to such proportions 
that gravitation, shifting, turns toward the university. It is 
too large to disintegrate. It has now the support of the word — 
"to him that hath shall be given." 

4. The prof essors and instructors seem quite respectable, 
both in number and ability. Already the staff contains 



more than fifty experienced educators — men cultured and 
experienced in the leading institutions of America and 
Europe. 

5. The departments or colleges already in vigorous operation 
or inaugurated this anniversary are the first indications of our 
title. Foremost is the College of Literature and Science^ 
with a full corps of able professors, with an honorable history 
among educational men, and with a wide variety of culture- 
courses. 

6. Garrett Biblical Institute. Resting on a distinct foun- 
dation, and under a distinct board and separate management 
but most intimate relations and interchange of work, it is to 
the university all that could be asked in theology. It gives the 
church work of the highest order. 

. 7. The Medical Dejpartment (the Chicago Medical College) 
has established a right to first rank of medical schools in this 
or in any land, by the number and ability of its professors, by 
the extent and thoroughness of its curriculum, by the genuine- 
ness and accuracy of its instructions, and by the variety and 
richness of its auxiliaries. 

8. The College of Technology, organized and ordained by 
the board at this session, starts out with liberal appointments, 
with a body of eleven professors and instructors, and with all 
the provisions and appliances in laboratories and instruments 
necessary for its successful operation. 

, 9. The Preparatory Department also deserves mention. Its 
size, the vast amount of work it is doing, and its importance 
in its relations to all the other departments, make it in itself in 
many respects not inferior to many institutions of the land 
with much higher titles. 

10. The Woman's College is an added grace as well as virtue. 
Their accommodations and achievements entitle them to large 
credit. This day this fair daughter of the church comes to this 
maternal mansion, raps gently on the door, and behold! the 
door swings round on its hinges, and the Woman's College 
takes her seat gracefully among the colleges of the university. 
She comes with a good dowry. N^ow the homes of the North- 
west can feel that their sons and daughters are cared for in our 



68 

literary home. This is a vast and significant movement. It 
is a prophecy of conquest. 

11. It is onr privilege to chronicle still another department, 
long in the plan of the university, indorsed by special resolu- 
tion at the meeting that organized the first faculty, but now by 
the first realized as a fact. It is an important school for the 
maintenance of a most learned and honorable profession — The 
Department of Law. This is achieved by a union with the 
University of Chicago, thus dividing the expenses and increas- 
ing their prospects. I hail this as the dawning of a better 
day in the relations of our institutions. I believe the dignity 
and force of this law-school, a maid nourished by two mothers, 
will justify the experiment. 

12. The Library of the University forms another argument 
in vindication of our title. With the largest library west of 
the Hudson river, and an actual annual income for the library 
already surpassing that of any college or university in this 
country, and with funds so adjusted and secured as in four or 
five years to double the present income, and with provisions 
just ordered for handling this force, the libraries seem to us a 
department of no mean proportions. 

13. The Museum,., containing more than fifteen thousand 
specimens selected with special reference to use for instruction, 
is another indication. It is rich in typical specimens of the 
large groups of animals and plants. The national reputation 
of the scholar who ts the living soul of this large collection. 
Prof. Marcy, now dean of the College of Technology, explains 
its completeness in every department of natural history. 

14. Here must be added cabinets, and consei-vatories of art 
and music. 

15. It may not be amiss to mention six large buildings for 
the use of the scholars — four of which are equaled by but few 
other educational edifices in America. 

16. The fullness of our courses of study and the thorough- 
ness of its work in every department — on this group of col- 
leges and this foundation, and these faculties of instruction, 
and these honorable actualities, I base our defense and rest our 
case before the bar of public judgment. 



59 



VI. WHAT ABE THE WANTS AND RES0UBCE8 OF THE UlS'rVERSITY? 

The first want is to develop the existing departments. We 
have heen foundation laying. The trustees have been toiling 
on patiently underground; they have planned deeply and widely. 
The basis is certain. The time has come to push forward to 
larger results. The church has intrusted us with great inter- 
ests and opportunities, and she Mali not allow us to return the 
intrusted talents without increase — she has a right to demand 
fruit. She has found that of her children committed to schools 
outside of positive religious influence she received back into 
her bosom and for her use less than one-third of one per cent. 
Kot one in three hundred has come back to her with the 
fruits and culture needed for her use. She is aware of this, 
and now demands of religious institutions such energy and 
activity as shall furnish her with skilled workmen. This in- 
volves more professorships, more assistants to chairs already 
filled and overworked. It involves more buildings, such as 
dormitories, libraries, observatories, chapels, and gymnasiums. 
There is no reason for rest or doubt. As I see it, we are in the 
pass, the strategical point which must be held. Christian cul- 
ture cannot surrender this point. Yonder is the amazement of 
the civilized world — a city built in a day, burned in a night, 
and rebuilt in an hour. In this community absolutely nothing- 
is impossible. Any great manly enterprise that comprehends 
the future and embraces the interests of the people in that lati- 
tude never lacks defenders. It is only the timid that are routed ; 
ships are wrecked on shoals and coasts, not often on the open 
sea. With this stout hulk and well-laid beam and live oak 
knees we have nothing to fear but fear. Qur resources are not 
easily computed. The basis or the actual body of our resources 
is easily comprehended; but outside of these eighteen or twenty 
hundreds of thousands of dollars there are other forces not a whit 
less actual, though less measurable. There are our graduates, 
no small force, all believing in us, all sending here their repre- 
sentatives. Beyond these is that shadowy something called 
public sentiment; that atmosphere that fills tlie public eye and 
the popular lungs. This is no inconsiderable force. It is the 



60 

support of the workers, for no man, however great the girth of 
his brain or chest, can do anything without an atmosphere. 
That is what ails France and Spain to-day. There is too much 
oxygen in the air for the health of the despots, and at the bot- 
tom of society there is too much carbonic acid gas for the 
health of free institutions. Public sentiment is the third 
hoase. You may improve and direct it, but you cannot dis- 
pense with it or resist it. Institutions, like garments, must fit 
the spirit and mind of the age. Fitting thus, they are as 
omnipotent as the tide of history. Once in league with events, 
triumph is only a. question of time. Look at this great l^orth- 
west, teeming with the life and energy of all lands, and see our 
field. Look at yonder city blazing at one end and rebuilding 
at the other; sending in the same message the news of the loss 
of all millions and orders for new millions ; striking speechless, 
and so beyond protest, the timid and hesitating, commanding 
as by absolute authority the approval of the wisest judgment 
and adding spurs and wings to the progressive and great for- 
tunes to the dauntless — look at yonder city and take your 
key-note. This is the age of great enterprises. "Wooden shoes 
and ox-teams have passed away. We ride on the morning 
light, and whisper in every human ear with one breath like the 
kinsmen and heirs of the Infinite. We martial soldiers by the 
millions; we build railroads by the thousand miles; we go to 
war in palace cars ; we fight great battles in the war offices, 
thousands of miles'from the smoke of the battle, and order on 
maps and by telegraph each charge and change. This age does 
everything on the most magnificent scale, whether it is to settle 
a wilderness or control a government. There is no advantage 
for small enterprises. In the field of education men invest in 
great movements, and the spirit of the age is seen in 
great gifts. In the year 1871, $8,435,090 were given to 
this cause by a few men. Two men gave over a million 
each, and twenty-three men gave over one hundred 
thousand dollars each. I rejoice that our friends are in- 
spired with this spirit, as seen in the new departments 
which the trustees have this week launched for an endless 
voyage. 



61 

The College of Technology, the Law School, and the purchase 
of the Woman's College are land-marks, signals to the centuries ; 
high testimony to men and angels that the university is on the 
march into the future with undaunted spirit. Here, too, I am 
permitted to mention another sign of hope — the noble gift 
from a young man, Geo. H. Sisson, Esq., who has established 
the "Allen-Sisson Chair in Physics" as a monument to the 
memory of his father, saying: "He was an upright, modest, 
devoted Christian. If I have any character or religious experi- 
ence, under God I owe it to him. It seems to me only fitting 
that this monument should be erected to his memory by a son 
who love.s him and whom he loved." This must be pleasing 
to good men, to angels, and to God. There are other sires and 
mothers whose names might be sent down the future on an 
everlasting mission of blessing by worthy sons. In such an 
age there is no hope for us except in keeping step with this 
lofty music. If we cannot do it here, where can it be done? 
Men whom neither wars can slay, nor floods drown, nor fires 
consume — men who are doing all things else ip a heroic way, 
are the men to do this work in a royal way. 

The day that New England crowded the summit of Bunker 
Hill to see the monument founded and hear Daniel Webster, 
the multitude swayed up toward the platform till those in front 
were nearly crushed. The marshal ordered the crowd back, 
when the cry came up from the multitude: " It cannot be done. 
It is impossible." When Webster, stepping to the front, said: 
"Nothing is impossible on Bunker Hill;" and before the 
motion of his hand the crowd surged back. Standing here this 
hour, and in the faces of the men of the Northwest, I say that 
" Nothing is impossible on this soil." The age, the latitude, 
the patronage and the magnitude of the enterprise make success 
almost as certain as it is necessary. The university rises before 
us in distinct outlines. A figure of power and of beauty, the 
daughter of the church and of our civilization, she stands 
among our free institutions to preserve our common schools 
from stagnation and poverty; to multiply our inventions and 
perfect our machinery; to stimulate our industrial and aug- 
ment our productive power; to develop mines and command 



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6^ 

their precious treasures; to deepen our channels and lengthen 
onr livers; to improve onr thoroughfares and increase onr 
transporting capacity; to dredge onr harbors and signal our 
coasts and illumine our cities; to save om* ballot-box ti'om 
brutality and our juries from bribery; to deliver our courts 
from partisanism and our legislative halls from corruption; to 
protect our sick-chambers from empiricism and om- bar from 
venality; to exalt our reasons above skepticism and our faith 
above superstition — thus I • see her. with the beauty of the 
morning on her cheek and the glory of eteiTdty on her brow, 
quickening our sons and daughters into kings and queens by 
the light of her eye, by the inspiration of her smile and the 
fragrance of her presence. Coming into this work I have 
little to say that is personal. I stand among my fi-iends. 
I could not tell you anything new, for I have been in yom* 
midst ever since I was here as a student. I am here by choice 
and with the fullest approval of my judgment. I have no other 
work or ambition than to do at my best the work given me in 
the order of providence. I expect success, for I am surrounded 
as I know by a faculty of wise and prudent counsellors, and 
sustained by a board of ti'ustees whose character years ago I 
learned to emulate, and I know that God always lives and 
oives wisdom to them that ask. He knows mv needs and that 
I cling to Him. I hesitate to put on a mantle worn by such 
men as Hinman.'Foster, and Haven — men whose names fill 
the church; and I am oppressed with a care of the youth. 
Thev are in my heart as if they were my own sons and daugh- 
ters. Mv best advice and time shall be given to them indi- 
vidually. This care shall be the last neglected. As I enter 
the solemn responsibility. I implore the prayers of the church 
and the blessing of Almighty God. 



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